


i told you to go left (then i went right)

by fivesecrets



Series: for the last time verse [3]
Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: (Implied) Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Angry Sex, Angst, Background Relationships, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Phone Sex, Pining, Pool Sex, Relationship Advice, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-08-23 05:23:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20237443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivesecrets/pseuds/fivesecrets
Summary: Maybe he’d find it funnier if he could bring himself to look at his former best friend. If he knew that meeting Kai’s eyes wouldn’t end in a glare and Julian’s heart cracking a little bit more each time. The worst part is, he always finds himself forgetting, walking over to Kai with a joke he knows his best friend will huff that adorable choked laugh at, and then being served a blunt, harsh reminder that things will almost certainly never be the same again. He could combine what he imagines the pain of being doused by a bucket of ice water whilst suffering a dagger to the heart simultaneously feels like, but he’s certain that wouldn’t hold a candle to the agony that racks through him as he traipses away from Kai’s stone face.Or, in which Julian and Kai can never stay apart for long, until they can.





	i told you to go left (then i went right)

**Author's Note:**

> • I go back to school tomorrow, so I don't know how long Part 4 is going to take.  
• Please comment, it really does mean the world to me!  
• Also, song suggestions for the verse playlist are still needed, so please let me know if you have any.  
• All the love, and thanks for following this series x

_ **mainz, germany** _

A sharp stab of pain shoots through Julian’s foot when he pulls on his laces too tightly with frustration. He’d been distracted by Kai during the pre-game tactics, watching the way the team swarmed their youngest member on his twentieth birthday, and had accidentally double-knotted his boots in the process. It hadn’t mattered anyway, because the caretaker manager (they finally got a break from Lӧw, thank fuck) didn’t play him, but it was proving to be a nightmare when the rest of his friends are pissing around and probably annoying all the security in the bowels of the Mainz stadium. They’ve just beaten Estonia 8-0, their humourless manager isn’t with them, and qualification for the Euros seems almost guaranteed.

The only two who aren’t celebrating are Julian and Kai. While Julian fiddles with his laces, Kai’s sitting on the bench opposite, rifling purposefully through his bag before smiling at Manu who has sat down next to him. The captain has slung a casual arm over Julian’s former best friend’s shoulders and they start chatting avidly, Julian picking up fractions of their conversation and hates himself for the curl of jealousy that churns through his stomach. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed when Manu catches him staring at them. He doesn’t care if he’s open with his emotions now; it’s the only thing he thought he had left, the only thing he knew Kai couldn’t resist.

Except that it isn’t, because Kai’s pointedly ignored him since that night in Leverkusen.

Jannis had told him that he needs to try everything to try and get through to the younger one. He’d listened to his brother until two in the morning, kicking his heels against the footrest while Jannis spoke about betrayal and secrecy like Julian wasn’t three years older than him. Once Jannis had headed to bed, Julian had sat in the same seat, unmoving, for the best part of five hours until long past dawn, alone, not even trying to conceal the tears that trickled silently down his cheeks. 

He’d seen that Sophia had taken Kai to Mykonos the following day, the pictures too blurry for him to see if Kai’s eyes were dead behind their unfailing ivy glimmer. 

His texts hadn’t gone through.

Julian had pledged to get Kai alone as soon as possible when they reconvened for the international break, practically running over to him when he entered the training complex to see Kai standing in the lobby already. A little piece of him had melted in anticipation when Kai didn’t move away from him, even offered a limp hand for Julian to shake, but his face was made of stone and he didn’t meet his eyes.

Moments later, Leon and Serge had come clattering through the revolving door and Kai had thrown his arms around them. A little piece of his heart had broken off; widening the emotional chasm that Kai’s broken tone had already slightly chipped away on Julian’s final night in their city.

“Kai,” he’d said weakly once they’d been dismissed for free time. The rest of the team were talking over one another, Kai loitering at the back. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

Kai hadn’t responded, but he didn’t open the door when Julian knocked. He wasn’t in the common room, or with the older members of the squad playing cards or whatever ancient people shit they did. It wasn’t until Kai entered the dining room three hours later with Nico, Joshua and Niklas that Julian even saw him again.

He’d stood up, not caring that the rest of the team turned to look at him when he called for Kai to sit with him and Leon.

Kai’d answered with the tiniest shake of his head and sat down on the other end of the long table while the team heckled Julian with more than just a little malice. They continued until breakfast the next morning, where Julian was half contemplating not turning up at all, when Marco or Manu or somebody must have said something because the teasing glances moulded into concerned ones and the mocking comments became kind and conversational.

This morning, when he’d tried to tell him ‘happy birthday,’ Kai had barely even acknowledged him.

His heart had squeezed painfully when Kai didn’t gravitate towards him on the training pitch. He saw the comments when people remarked about the lack of interaction between them, hating them for being correct, hating himself for causing it, hating Kai for having a reason to hate him.

The seat next to him on the bus remained pitifully empty. Every person that passed gave him a glance when they noticed Kai sitting alone too. He didn’t know how much Kai had told them, whether they knew the extent of Julian’s betrayal, if their motives were fuelled by contempt. He doesn’t know if leaving was supposed to feel like this.

He’d left because he’d wanted everything to clear, but now it’s even worse than it was before.

“Bus is here!” The stand-in coach yells, cutting through Julian’s reminiscence as the team get to their feet. Thomas isn’t here (Julian’s thoughts on that aside, it’s terrifying that someone so pivotal to the team’s recent success has been written out and the inexperienced younger generation are expected to carry on like nothing’s happened) so Manu isn’t otherwise occupied as he and Kai file out of the dressing room.

He lets the rest of the team and some on the staff onto the vehicle before him, but the seat next to Kai is still unoccupied when Julian finally clambers into the aisle. The younger one must see his advance, because suddenly he reaches his hand out and half-yanks Matze down.

Julian sinks into a spare seat across from where Marco has also sat alone. His new captain seems caught up in whatever he’s doing when Julian sticks his headphones in, so he isn’t expecting the Dortmund star to sidle over to him and start talking avidly. It seems unobtrusive, friendly while the chatter on the bus spikes up and down as people decide on songs to play, but once they’re halfway back to the hotel Marco turns to him with quiet concern in his eyes.

“I’ve noticed that you and Kai aren’t speaking? Is everything okay between the two of you?”

“Please, don’t.” Julian protests weakly. “I can’t speak about this here.”

“Why not?” Marco says like it’s obvious, “everyone’s got headphones in, and Kai himself is asleep. It’s not like anyone’s going to be listening, and besides, I might be able to offer some first-hand insight into what he’s going through.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was madly in love with a teammate who left me too.”

“Marco,” Julian can’t stop his voice from being a weird mix of warning tone and audible amusement. “Kai isn’t in love with me.”

“He isn’t? I could’ve sworn the two of you were together!”

“No?” He says incredulously, feeling even his neck burn hot under Marco’s gaze. “Look, I really don’t want to talk about this with anyone around. It’s so complicated, and---,”

“I get it,” Marco interrupts, “but as your captain, it’s my role to make sure everything’s okay with you. We can talk about this another time if you think it’s going to impact your performances next season.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says, resting his head against the window and watching his breath cloud the glass. He isn’t sure who believes him less.

The bus is rolling along the tree-lined hotel driveway when Manu gets up from his obligatory seat at the front of the bus and instinctively commandeers the entire bus’ attentions simply by glaring. A short cacophony of laughter bursts out from somewhere behind Julian (he swears he could identify Leroy’s weird hooting laugh from an island in the middle of the ocean) and he’s pretty sure he hears someone mention how Manu must transcend unconsciousness, but quickly enough the entire bus is alert, aside from Kai.

“It is tradition; started by that crazy boyfriend of mine,” Manu begins, rolling his eyes fondly; “to wake up the player on his birthday should he fall asleep.” The national captain starts making his way down the aisle, still managing to glare down every single member as he passes, “Havertz has made a schoolboy error, hopefully he shall learn from this.”

The goalkeeper sighs once, like he’s had to witness too many shambolic scenes from the squad over the years before raising a finger as the signal to begin singing. Even Marco is craning his neck to see Kai’s reaction.

Julian isn’t quite sure what to expect when the team softly begins the opening lines of the song, and it’s borderline creepy until half the team stands up (definitely dangerously) to yell Kai’s name. He sings along, has to in order to avoid Marco’s suspicious gaze, and the sentiment that if things were different he’d be yelling loudest of all elicits a dull ache in his chest. From the howling laughter that breaks out, really, it’s a miracle the bus driver hasn’t crashed yet; it’s pretty obvious Kai has had a shocked reaction to the surprise, to the extent that Julian feels weirdly excluded for not laughing. 

Maybe he’d find it funnier if he could bring himself to look at his former best friend. If he knew that meeting Kai’s eyes wouldn’t end in a glare and Julian’s heart cracking a little bit more each time. The worst part is, he always finds himself forgetting, walking over to Kai with a joke he knows the younger one will huff his adorable choked laugh at, and then being served a blunt, harsh reminder that things will almost certainly never be the same again. He could combine what he imagines the pain of being doused by a bucket of ice water whilst suffering a dagger through his heart simultaneously feels like, but he’s certain it wouldn’t hold a candle to the agony that racks through him as he traipses away from Kai’s stone face. 

He has to force himself to keep from checking back to Kai when he exits the bus. Partly because Marco is following him, and the striker doesn’t miss a trick, but mainly because he knows that if he does and Kai isn’t looking back at him too, the miniscule strings holding the pieces of his heart together would snap.

They’re supposed to be flying to Ibiza in three days, and Kai won’t even speak to him.

Some of the senior players hijack proceedings and they’re all herded into a slightly-too-small side room that ends up with Julian perched awkwardly on the armrest of one of the old-fashioned sofas, directly in Kai’s eyesight. The room is lit by gentle lamps that give off a pinkish glow, settling a hue over the room that definitely doesn’t fit the boisterous characters of the team but makes Kai look absolutely fucking beautiful.

His throat dries dangerously.

They end up singing to Kai again, Julian killing himself inside because he knows Kai despises the attention more than most, remembers the red glint growing on his cheeks when he turned nineteen, the little sting on the tip of his nose as he swatted Julian away when he tried to serenade him. The kitchen was dark, and it was just the two of them, yet Julian still sees all the same emotions written all over Kai’s face now, surrounded by a team full of his heroes (all except for the aroused glint in his eye as he grabbed Julian’s hand and almost tripped over the skirting board in his haste to take the older one into his bedroom).

He wonders if Kai ever thinks about that.

He wonders if Kai is thinking about it that second, when Kai subconsciously meets his gaze and actually holds it than two milliseconds.

“Happy birthday,” he mouths when whatever short circuited in his brain jolts back into the present. He knows Kai can read him, he’s always been better than Julian at that, but even Julian can deduce that there’s something else occupying the younger’s mind because Manu is bringing a cake out, sparklers flaming droplets of fire into the darkened room, but Kai is still staring at him. Julian weakly thinks he couldn’t take his eyes off him even if he wanted to, not with the way the reflection of the fire is casting orange shadows over the chasms of Kai’s face and catching messily in his eyes.

There’s the tiniest smile on Kai’s face when he answers, “thank you.”

Julian has always known that he feels too much, he can’t be surprised when his heart skips in response to the tiniest interaction with the man he’s been in love with for almost a year now, can’t be surprised that absolutely nothing has changed in the short amount of time they haven’t been speaking. That doesn’t stop him from feeling mildly sick when Kai stops looking at him.

“You spoke to him?” Marco whispers over his shoulder, and if it wasn’t for the fact he’d be ridiculed for the next three international breaks and the fear has conditioned some sort of filter into him, Julian would’ve yelped in shock. “He said two words to you and you’ve gone irrevocably scarlet.”

“It’s--- it’s hot in here.”

“Do I need to leave before Havertz gets naked?” Marco sniggers, wincing dramatically at the soft punch Julian throws at his shoulder. He knows the older one is just messing with him, but he can’t help but wonder if he’s always this immature.

“How the fuck does Mario put up with you all the time?”

Marco looks like he’s on the verge of saying something but then decides against it, clamping down hard on his bottom lip as his eyes trail to Kai. “I’m only joking, Jule. For the record, by the way, Mario is much worse than I am. Just you wait until you get to your first training session.”

Julian can’t resist shooting a glance at Kai to be sure he didn’t hear Marco, but he’s apparently too occupied by being forced into pleading with Leon not to splat a slice of cake into his face.

One of the staff members has put on a film that no one’s paying any attention to, even Jonas, but the lights are dim so no one can see him when he tries to sneak off. After his brief moment with Kai (he hates himself for feeling like everyone else in the room vanished when Kai gave him even the tiniest of smiles), the youngest member of the team had reverted to continuously refusing to acknowledge his existence right in front of the watchful eye of Marco Reus.

Who, he sees when he hears footsteps scrape across the floor, has followed him into the oak dining room.

“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you,” Marco says, and there’s unmistakeable guilt in his eyes as he pulls out one of the chairs. The scrape across the flagstones rips into the silent air. Their team is right next door, they shouldn’t be here, they should be in there celebrating Kai’s birthday and their exceptional performances over the course of the week, but in that second Julian feels like he and Marco are the last people on earth, save for Kai. “If you don’t want me to talk to you about this then just tell me to fuck off, but Julian, I’m worried about you on a personal level. Like I said, I know how gut-wrenching it---,”

“Not here,” Julian interrupts, pointing at the closed door. Marco must understand him, they’re never going to get this conversation over with before someone notices they’re missing and comes looking for them, especially not if they’re right outside. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

He squeezes his eyes shut as they make their way through the hotel corridor, half to avoid the violence of the light and half to quell the tears that he can feel forming in his eyes. He isn’t expecting to feel the rush of wind on his face and a barely-lit garden with roses so strongly scented he feels mildly sick.

“No one will see us here,” Marco says, leading Julian deep into the maze that is the beautiful disarray of plants until they find a little wooden bench, and Julian has to wonder how Marco even knows about this place. “The wind’s pretty loud.”

“Yeah,” he gets out, cursing himself for suddenly getting choked up with at the thought of talking about Kai to someone who only sees them on the outside. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know how to talk about this.”

“That’s okay.”

“Can you,” he trails off, “can you tell me about how you felt when Mario left?”

“Fuck,” Marco breathes, Julian barely catching it over the bluster. “There’s a lot, are you sure you want to hear it?”

“I am,” Julian says, not because he believes himself for a second, but more because he thinks Kai is slowly detonating him with the divide and he has to stop it before he’s broken beyond repair.

“We became close when I signed back to Dortmund from Gladbach, as everyone knows. But, what they don’t know is that he was the team member assigned to ease me into training, because we’d met in the national team and Mats wasn’t back on my first day.” Marco begins, eyes leaving Julian’s face and staring resolutely at the floor like he hasn’t made himself relive this for a long time. “We connected so well both on and off the field, it was so instant I didn’t know what was happening until I realised I’d fallen for him.”

Julian’s not sure if the wind has blown cold or if the goose bumps forming sharply over his arms are as a result of the familiarity of Marco’s description. He remembers the moment he realised he felt something for his best friend, standing on the platform in Leverkusen train station, how it crept up on him while still managing to be a long time coming.

“I just wanted to be around him all the time,” Marco’s voice cuts off and when Julian looks over, he sees the older one is scarily near tears, and suddenly Julian’s flashed back to the stunned locker room after their defeat to South Korea, the only noise being the quiet, embarrassed sobs coming from him. “Then we had that comeback against Malaga in the Champions League, everything was so much, the emotions were so strong, I couldn’t hold it back anymore and I just kissed him.”

“Brave,” Julian deadpans.

“Yeah,” Marco lets out a breathy laugh. “I was so lucky he kissed me back.”

“What happened after?”

“Are you sure you want to know that?” Marco winks drily, all traces of emotion gone, and Julian feels a hot flush run down the back of his neck. “I felt like a teenager, felt these giddy rushes every time we looked at each other, it was so different to anything that came before.”

“I know the feeling,” Julian whispers through the painful lump stuck in his throat.

“The worst part of him telling me he was leaving was how completely unprepared I was for it. We’d been sneaking off to make out after training and then heading home together, until one day he refused my offer to go back to mine, telling me something about how he needed to see someone.” Marco sighs, “turns out it was me he needed to see.”

Julian’s stomach drops painfully as he revisits his recurring self-torment about not telling Kai for the millionth time. He pictures Mario, wishes he could have a fraction of the bravery he did.

“I remember the night. It was absolutely throwing it down and the tree outside my flat was creaking like something out of a horror film, so much so I almost missed the knock on the door, but I answered and there he was. There wasn’t any bullshit, he just told me he was transferring to Bayern and left. He used his spare key to grab the stuff he’d left at my flat, dropped off a little present for me and moved away. I hadn’t even digested that he was leaving before he was gone.”

Marco looks at him like he half-expects Julian to say something (or maybe to run away like he always does), but Julian couldn’t do either of those things even if he wanted to. Marco’s words have yanked something pivotal from his chest.

“You can’t do anything but try to deal with it. I knew it was his decision, and he did what he thought was best for his career, but for days on end I used to sit and stare at nothing, wondering why he’d made the choice when we were touted to become the next great partnership. A bit like you and Kai,” Marco says, and Julian doesn’t know if it’s meant to hurt him, but _fucking hell _he isn’t expecting the way the words knife him. “It wasn’t linear either, which was the toughest part of all to contend with, because sometimes I felt fine without him and like I was finally moving on and then I would pass out on the training field on a freezing winter night the following week.”

“You broke up?”

“Of course we did. There was no way we could stay together through that. It might be different with the two of you though, given you’re not together.”

“I’m in love with him, though.” Julian admits, and the sentiment should definitely be way too risky to utter aloud anywhere near the potential earshot of the rest of the team, but he can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t think he would even if Kai happened in on their conversation. “It was only after he ran away from me that I realised I can’t do this without him.”

“Are you sure you want to come to Dortmund?”

“I am. I’m just anything but sure that I’m ready to leave Kai. I just couldn’t deal with the emotions anymore.” He says to the floor. “What happened when Mario came back?”

“We spoke about shit we never spoke about both before he left and while he was in Munich, then we kissed a lot.”

“There’s so much I haven’t spoken to Kai about.”

“Like what, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“He doesn’t know how I feel about him ever since he kissed me.”

“Why haven’t you told him?”

“I didn’t know how to. What use is it now, I’m leaving anyway?”

Marco looks about to rebut him with a fucking monologue, but suddenly Leon and Serge come crashing messily through the foliage and Julian can’t stop the hysterical laughter that bubbles up when he sees leaves strewn in Leon’s curls. Marco’s confused face is blindingly obvious in his orbit but it’s easier to pretend he can’t see him, gives him a reason for Marco to corner him about telling Kai and for Julian to try and put into words all the reasons why he _can’t._

“Jule--,” Marco starts to say, before Leon cuts him off with a bellowing yell.

“There you are! Everyone’s been looking for you for ages now!” The Bayern midfielder says, grabbing Julian with one hand and Marco with the other, “come with me!”

“We weren’t done---,” Marco protests but it’s futile, Leon’s dragged them back into the hotel and immediately they’re surrounded by half the team (some definitely more sober than others) who merge and suddenly Julian’s pushed until he almost collides directly with Kai.

“Careful,” his former best friend says with that _fucking beautiful stupid voice of his_, looking down at Julian through his eyelashes while Julian’s knees weaken on the spot.

“Sorry,” he gets out, praying it doesn’t sound like gibberish with the way his voice is trembling. He feels like everything is splayed across his face for everyone to laugh at, for Kai to read, but like always, the younger one isn’t paying attention. He’s starting to move away again, Julian can already see him eyeing up a conversation with Jonathan, and Julian blurts it out before he can stop himself. “Can I come to your room tonight? I think we need to talk about a few things.”

“Can’t exactly stop you, can I?” Kai shrugs, flipping off Leon for his crude accompaniment of kissy noises.

There are a lot of things Julian could snipe at Leon in retaliation for his unavoidable ability to annoy everyone in his general vicinity, however he can’t because he’ll only render himself a hypocrite. Despite all their conversation about going to see Max, Leon never did, yet Julian still catches him scrolling forlornly through Instagram, trying not to like one of his former boyfriend’s photos from months ago. He wants to tease him for not talking to him, but he’s just as guilty.

Kai’s blended into the group, far away from Julian by the time he notices he’s been staring at his former best friend for probably far too long.

He spends the next forty minutes shooting less-than-furtive glances at Kai, waiting for him to disappear so he can follow him up to his room and talk through everything he’s left unsaid (aside from his feelings, because what the fuck would Kai be supposed to do with that information?). He ends up being so tense he misses Kai’s actual departure and he’s pretty sure the youngest one has been gone fifteen minutes by the time he notices. Leon clicks his tongue while Julian rushes past, and if it wasn’t for the fact Julian’s been crazed by Kai’s justifiable perfect storm of anger, he’d stop and aim one of those chastising comments in the Bayern midfielder’s direction.

His face plants inelegantly against the top step as he makes his way up to Kai’s floor, falling with an overly loud crash. There’s no one around to witness his humiliation, so while his eyes adjust to the minute detail of the red-pink carpet threads, he takes a second to catch his breath and forces himself to sober into something mirroring coherency so he doesn’t do something idiotic like try to make out with Kai the moment his former best friend opens the door.

If the earth could take mercy and swallow him whole, he’d be fucking grateful, he thinks, when an awkward cough rings out into the silence and there’s Kai standing above him. He can see the younger one swallowing down laughter, the fight to keep the corners of his lips from turning upwards, yet Julian can still see the underlying anger etched into his cheekbones.

“What are you doing?” Kai’s voice sounds so unlike him, so foreign in the silence. Julian’s lucky not to hurtle head-first down the flight of stairs because his legs won’t stop fucking shaking as he climbs gingerly to his feet. His hand finds the handrail and he grips it, whether for his physical or mental security he doesn’t know, but watching his knuckles glow white is grounding because he cannot make himself look at the person he knows he has hurt beyond belief.

“S-sorry,” he chokes out, “can we--, can we go somewhere private?”

“My door’s open.”

He uses Kai’s turned back to try and pull some semblance of having his shit together as he follows him into his bedroom. It’s almost identical to Julian’s own, except the duvet is pulled all out of shape because Kai has never made his bed any day of his life. Julian wants to wrap himself up in the covers and inhale his best friend’s scent.

Kai fixes him with a glare that stops him from even being able to walk.

“You wanted to talk,” Kai says blandly, sitting down on the corner of his bed with an eyebrow raised expectantly. “So, talk.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. I kept saying that I needed to figure out how to tell you, we’d agreed years ago.” Kai nods once. His face is still laced with something not dissimilar to hatred, but there’s the tiniest of glints behind his eyes that Julian clings onto like a madman, because that’s pretty much what he is when it comes to Kai. “Time caught up with me, I guess.”

“You found the time to tell Mitch and Sam.”

“I wasn’t as close with them as I was with you,” he says. It’s not untrue.

“You still knew they were together and didn’t think to tell me.”

“We’ve been over this, Kai. You wouldn’t like it if someone outed us.”

“No, I don’t like it,” Kai says, voice suddenly escalating and _shit_, if Kai doesn’t calm down soon, Manu is going to come knocking and he can just imagine the look of disappointment on Marco’s face. “I don’t like the fact you told them about us without my consent!”

“I know,” Julian says, trying not to let Kai hear the bitter sting of bubbling guilt that’s pretty much commonplace when Julian so much as looks at him now. He remembers Mitch and Sam, holding hands and bickering affectionately while his own heart tore itself to pieces over the impossibility of having that with Kai, how everything spilled out from then. “I was an idiot.”

“You were.”

His eyes fall on the pinpoint of light shining in through the crack in the curtains, falling just in front of where Kai is sitting and stretching out in a golden beam of separation. Mollifying Kai, or even making him understand, is impossible when they’re divided like this, with Julian’s secret hanging over him and his own flaws repel him from his best friend. All this, and Julian breaks through the light to take a step closer to him.

He wouldn’t blame Kai if the younger reached out and shoved him into the desk with all his might, or if that frustration that surfaced moments ago reappears and his advance was met with an bomb of expletives, but it doesn’t. He can feel his still-unspoken thoughts clumping together to attack him, formulating their assault on his stupid inability to trust, but then he slides a hand into Kai’s hair and yeah, this is his only defence.

“Why aren’t you stopping me?” He says before he can do something stupid like think.

“I need this,” Kai mumbles, so quietly Julian’s sure he’s misheard. “I need to show you how much you’ve hurt me.”

“Tell me,” Julian says, pulling his hand free from the curled strands like they’re on fire. For a fleeting moment, there looks to be something stained on Kai’s lips, something weighted that might actually begin to break this fucking deadlock, but then the younger one swallows violently and there’s a hand snaking under the back of Julian’s shirt. There’s a weird sense of dissociation, anguish spreading out from the unidentifiable centre of his mind at what Kai isn’t telling him mixing deliciously with non-violent flames sparking out from Kai’s fingertips.

Kai cards his fingers in the material of Julian’s shirt and it’s jarring how Kai is the only person who possesses the ability to mute his inhibitions that scream at him. His knees shake as he follows Kai back against the screwed-up sheets, unable to stop himself from burying his face in the younger one’s neck.

“I can’t,” Kai mumbles, his scent fucking blinding, so striking it takes Julian a moment to understand it was in response to his question. “I can only do this.”

The want to kiss him rises up so quickly Julian actually stops breathing.

“Why?” He hears himself say, feels the air blow cold against his bare back where his shirt has ridden up when Kai pulls away from underneath him. “You shouldn’t be letting me do this.”

“You want it,” Kai answers bluntly, pressing his fingers against a tiny birthmark on Julian’s side that he knows is going to send his brain into meltdown, the fucking prick, and Julian knows he’s doing that to distract him from something Kai doesn’t want to say, but he can’t think how to ask him.

“Do you?” He says instead.

Kai blocks the painstaking brush of cold air with his hand, so warm Julian wonders if he’ll see a burn mark engraved on the small of his back once whatever the fuck this is has long ended. His voice manages to hold up to squeak his question out again. Kai shuts him up with one, hard glare from those fucking _eyes _that still pain him to look at.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t,” Kai’s offhand, blunt, like he’s only said it to stop Julian from worrying about everything.

He briefly wonders if Kai is looking forward to not having to deal with it.

Concern melts into the flames Kai is strumming over his body when the younger one slides his hand to ripple over the jut of Julian’s hipbone. His hands find the curve of Kai’s neck, painting a featherlight trace over the soft skin, half because he knows Kai adores it and half to reassure him that the other man is really there. 

He’s always been delicate with Kai, taking gentle care (until he stopped, he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid the sentiment like it’s written on his former best friend’s face) but before his thoughts can catch up with the burning intensity of Kai’s movements, he finds himself flipped, pinned against the mattress as Kai digs a nail into Julian’s skin.

“This,” Kai says, voice low, eyes blown and _shit_, Julian’s harder than he’s ever been in his life. “This isn’t even a fraction of what you’ve done to me.”

The ever-present lump in his throat malforms into something that threatens to shut down his entire body, inch by inch, as Kai covers his body. Kai’s hands knot in his hair, tugging at the strands, hands scratching at the back of his shoulders and he could bleed into nothing and still be unable to rip his eyes away from Kai.

“Tell me if I go too far,” Kai says to Julian’s chest before slipping a hand underneath Julian’s DFB-sanctioned shirt and practically tearing it from his skin. He’s grateful for the way out, terrified that he’s hurt Kai more than he could ever fathom and if it wasn’t for the fact that he knows Kai, knows the way he avoids his feelings like Julian avoids trusting people and wouldn’t dare truly delve into the depths of whatever’s going on behind those haunting eyes, he’d be petrified of what the younger one was going to do to him.

He remembers nights where he’d lie awake, staring at Kai and wishing that, just once, he’d open up.

It’s there that Julian realises the damage he’s caused. The guilt is almost enough to make him cry out, scream at Kai to stop and maybe rush out of the room and out of Kai’s life forever, right up until he feels an out of place gentle touch to his collarbone and his mind flips the fuck out.

He’s barely registered it before the hand is fumbling with the waistband of Julian’s sweatpants, Kai’s mumbling something inaudible as his hand trickles below the line of the material. His touch is ghost-light across Julian’s dick through his underwear.

“Please, Kai,” he says without thinking. He’s never been this side before.

Kai responds by removing himself from Julian completely, challenging taunt unconcealed in his smirk. He’s going to die if he doesn’t kiss him.

Five seconds, ten seconds, a whole minute passes before the sentiment finally commits suicide and he’s able to make his eyes meet Kai’s.

“Everything okay?” Kai says quickly, before looking like he wants to punch himself, and there’s that stupid leap in Julian’s heart again, the one that comes whenever Kai would beat him in Fortnite and start crowing about his superiority, or when Kai scored and would barrel towards him. Or now, when Kai is supposed to hate him but instead spends all his time making sure Julian isn’t freaking out.

“Yeah,” Julian gets out, “can you…”

Kai’s rooted to the spot, and even in his hazy gaze Julian can see his legs shaking. It’s hard to believe he’s twenty, how time is ticking through his birthday, how much Julian has fucked it up for him.

He forces himself to sit up and lifts a hand to touch his ex-best friend’s palm, trying not to think of the way his dick rubs against the damp cotton, tries not to touch himself when Kai needs him. It’s agony, the agony on Kai’s face multiplying with his own, before Kai makes up his mind and they collapse together in a beautiful mess of pain.

Kai’s fingers catch on the blonde hairs on Julian’s inner thighs, rubbing against their trail as he slides his sweatpants and underwear off in one long movement. The edge of his t-shirt brushes against the curve of Julian’s ass and _fuck_, Kai’s too pretty to be wearing that many clothes while Julian’s falling apart untouched. Something disconnects, dissociates, something in the hurt, Kai’s presence, _something _must blind him because only the feeling of the cold lube protruding into him snaps him back to reality.

He runs a hand over Kai’s bare tanned wrist.

The swirls dotted on the ceiling come into focus when his eyes roll backwards, body dangling in limbo as Kai prepares him. He wonders if Kai has ever got used to the sensation. Time has rendered him unable to ask.

His fingers move over the curve of Kai’s hand, writing an apology like Kai is going to become literate in his language and accept everything he’s done wrong. He knows the blank look on the younger man’s face is more than he should dare hope for, right up until Kai pulls his finger out and all the air in him escapes.

“Move yourself onto the bed properly,” Kai demands, turning away while Julian shifts awkwardly. There’s something predatory in the other man’s mannerism, something that makes inconclusive become sentient and attack Julian mercilessly as Kai rounds the bed to lie on top of him.

The unmistakable lacing anger is prominent from the first roll of Kai’s hips.

They don’t use words like normal. Julian doesn’t mumble all his nothings into the façade of space filtering in between them, Kai’s expression is unlike the glazed peace that Julian associates with him when they do this, he’s flushed pink and still murmuring those damn thoughts that he can’t quite deduce.

His hands come to rest on Kai’s back.

It’s relentless, Kai is gasping, and Julian’s pretty sure he’s about to pass out before he feels the threatening tighten in his lower stomach. 

He doesn’t know how much Kai has muted his pain.

He doesn’t get to ask, because once they’ve cleaned up and Julian is standing in the middle of the room awkwardly, watching Kai look up at him with lidded eyes (with that damn curl that always killed Julian back stuck to his forehead), all he can choke out is.

“We’re still okay to go to Ibiza together?”

Kai nods, placing a hand on Julian’s chest to gently guide him out of the room. “Jule,” he says quietly, “I understand you now.”

The sound of the door shutting drowns out his question of what the fuck Kai means. He tears himself up about it the entire night, standing on his balcony at three in the morning and staring at the black sky in confusion. He probably looks like a walking corpse when Kai bounds down into the lobby at eight, familiar old glow (that makes Julian's stomach convulse) plastered on his face as he slings an arm over Julian’s shoulders like nothing’s happened between them whatsoever.

Julian pretends not to see Marco’s eyes narrow.

* * *

_ **ibiza, spain** _

The sun is dipping low in the sky, sending out swathes of gorgeous pink across the sea below their villa that Julian would pay a lot more attention to if he wasn’t tuned into the buzz of Jannis, Jascha and Kai’s conversation and slyly shooting looks at his casually-shirtless friend. Since the night on national team duty, Kai has been acting like he did before he found out that Julian was leaving. Except now, he’s taken to clinging to Julian more than ever.

Maybe Julian would be considering it more if Kai didn’t look so fucking good. They’ve only been in Ibiza for a matter of hours yet his best friend (at least, Julian thinks they’re back to that) is already looking like he’s done nothing but attempt to tan for three weeks.

He wants to tell Kai how beautiful he is, but he can’t. That’s not what they do. Julian found that out after the whole kissing-in-a-Munich-hotel-room thing.

“Have you met any of the new signings yet?” Julian overhears Jascha ask. 

“I’ve met Kerem,” Kai says, “we get on well. I’ve also spoken to Daley over Instagram a lot recently.”

“It’s going to suck not seeing you as much,” Jannis says, before dropping his tone so low all Julian can hear is the gentle hum of his voice. It’s enough to shake Julian out of the trance he’s trapped himself in since Kai’s birthday, reiterating some of the things he’s tried to ignore that he won’t have with anywhere near the frequency now he’s gone. He can’t hear Kai’s response, but something’s changed in his body language, like the reminder has turned all his blood to ice.

He can’t stay and watch it. It’s unfair of him, he’s the one who fucking caused this and he’s a coward for being unable to do anything but run from it, run from Kai, but he’s already past the waterfall splashing quietly into the pool, halfway up the steps when Jannis calls out to him.

“Jule! Where are you going?”

“I think I’m going to head to bed,” he says, trying to act like nothing’s bothering him even when Kai’s still got that nervous demeanour possessing his body (and his shorts hiked dangerously far up his thighs, _fuck_). “I’m tired. From, you know, the flight.”

“Yeah,” one of his brothers says to his back.

Julian ends up sitting on his balcony, watching the hoards of people swarm towards the nightlife. The sun has sunk completely into the horizon, the moon beginning to shine as the tiniest of breezes skims across Julian’s skin. His silence is disturbed by a couple of the other lads from their group (who are staying in the villa next door) amble along the pavement past him, calling up in already not-sober voices, but he shakes them away. He can’t get thoughts of Kai out of his head.

His eyes fix on a palm tree, silhouetted in the muted-orange and black twilight. Jannis would love to photograph it, but his brother is still lounging on the patio with Kai, occasionally Julian can hear the faintest sounds of their laughter. He wants to be down there with them, pretending like everything’s okay. Or maybe he wouldn’t have to pretend.

Dortmund seemed like the right choice at the time. Everything that was going on, the potential development for his career, being _madly in love with Kai_, must have tainted his vision. When he looks at Kai, all the can see is the look in his eyes when he turned up on Julian’s doorstep almost a month ago now, suffers the way his heart broke that night all the fucking time, but of course it’s now he’s sure he could deal with it. Deal with being in love with him. He would get over it eventually, and they wouldn’t have this drawing a line between them.

He stays wrapped up in his thoughts for so long he almost misses the knock on the door. It takes him half a minute to convince himself to answer it, but when he does, he isn’t expecting Jascha on the other side.

“Kai and Jannis are playing table tennis,” his youngest brother says by way of explanation. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Julian can’t help but feel another pang of guilt, almost equal to the one he gets when he looks at Kai, when Jascha comes to sit beside him. Ever since the rumours about his sexuality caused him to self-impose a ban on returning to Bremen, he’s missed out on so much of his youngest brother’s formative years, to the point he’s stayed awake all night after one too many emotional phone calls begging him to come and visit.

“What’s up?”

“Well firstly, I wanted to say that I missed you a lot.” Jascha blushes, “we all do.”

“I miss you all too. I just can’t come home.”

“Why? That’s what I never understood.”

“People are cunts, Jascha, and they don’t drop rumours easily when they hear them.” It might just be because it’s late and Jascha’s eyes are blown wide with fatigue, but Julian can’t help but really see how much his brother looks his age in that moment. 

“You came back before Abiball,” Jascha points out.

“That was different, and I spent the entire time on edge. I’d rather move you all out to Dortmund to join me.”

“I can’t,” Jascha says way too quickly. “That was one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Werder have offered me a contract,” Jascha smiles, “and I know I will sign it, but I’m really scared.”

Guilt melts into pride and Julian can’t stop himself from manhandling his brother into a bearhug. He’s bumbling out congratulations, messing up Jascha’s hair and laughing at the little grumbles he gets in response. All traces of his previous sadness seemed to have dissipated into the horizon with the sun once Julian pulls away and looks at him.

“What are you scared about?”

“I don’t know. Not being good enough, I guess.”

“You’re not going to be perfect every game. You’ll probably get rinsed by some of the top players when you debut,” Julian says, thoughts immediately drifting to Kai’s defence-splitting runs, “but you’ll learn.”

“It’s not just that,” Jascha says, “it’s the fact I’m your brother. You’re so good, they’re going to think I’m going to be just like you and it’s so much pressure.”

“There’s not much I can do about that, sadly,” Julian laughs, giving Jascha a warning glare before his brother can joke about him suddenly becoming shit. “You will form your own identity in the Bundesliga from your very first game. Don’t worry about being compared to me.”

“Don’t know why I am anyway.”

Julian punches him in the shoulder.

“Is that everything?”

“Yeah, well,” Jascha stammers, cheeks turning darker as his gaze turns to the floor, “yeah.”

“I don’t think it is,” Julian teases, reclining backwards onto his mattress and hitching an eyebrow in his younger brother’s direction. Jascha is flooding towards a colour similar to Julian’s face after he’s finished a full ninety. “Come on, what is it?”

“Leave it,” Jascha gets up to leave and Julian doesn’t think he’s moved so quickly since when Kai was about to walk away from him the night he came back from Barcelona.

The reminder sets a dousing chill over his new-formed good mood.

“I like someone,” Jascha sighs, because Julian has always maintained a particular stubbornness when it comes to his brothers that make them unable to get away with not telling him anything. “Can I leave now?”

“Definitely not until you sit down and explain who this person is and how you met them.”

“No,” Jascha says, trying to shove Julian away from the door. There’s the strange sensation of slipping, but he regains his balance before he can fall to the wooden floor with a thud and manages to tackle his brother onto the bed, giggling ferociously. “I can wait out longer than you.”

“I have become the master of waiting,” Julian says.

_Because I waited to tell Kai that I was leaving for way longer than I should have._

Jascha goes quiet, almost concerned, and the fear causes Julian to go lax and let his brother go immediately. He doesn’t leave, but he sits up with the same stricken look on his face.

The vague sound of feet thumping upstairs echoes from below.

“What did you say about Kai?” Jascha asks quietly right as the door to Julian’s bedroom bursts open, and there’s Jannis and Kai (who’s still fucking shirtless and there’s a flush to his skin and _god _Julian wants to taste him again), breathing heavily as they furrow their eyebrows in confusion.

“What’s going on here? We heard a thud and then some laughing, and I just demolished Kai in table tennis---,”

“YOU DID NOT! I won by eight points!”

“No one likes a liar, Havertz,” Jannis smirks, shaking his head as Kai flips him off. “Anyway, you’ve been up here for twenty minutes Jascha, you said you’d play against me!”

“Yeah, yeah, just coming,” Jascha remarks, half looking like he’s relieved to be escaping Julian’s imminent teasing and half like he’s still concerned about whatever Julian said to himself when they were playfighting. His question rings around Julian’s brain as his eyes flicker up to meet Kai’s.

Kai gives him a small smile and he thinks he’s about to pass out.

He spends so long trying not to stare he doesn’t notice his brothers’ departure. Kai doesn’t go with them. He stands there, hands fumbling against the doorframe, looking about as petrified as Julian feels, but because it’s Kai he makes it look insanely beautiful. Julian dreads to think what his best friend would say if he knew what was going on in his head right then.

“Hi,” Kai says finally.

Jannis had sat between them on the flight, chatting nonstop with Kai about practically everything under the sun while Julian allowed the turbulence to rock him into oblivious near-sleep. They haven’t had a moment together alone all day.

“I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“That was the plan,” Julian deadpans, knowing that someone could walk out on the landing and eavesdrop on them so easily. He isn’t much of a guard when Kai’s standing there, all shirtless beauty and shy smiles. “But Jascha wanted to speak to me.”

“You left pretty abruptly earlier.”

“Yeah. I did,” he swallows, sitting up to lean against the pillows. A ripple of cold wind blusters into the room, causing goose bumps to prickle over Julian’s arms and Kai to shiver slightly. “Would you, um, like to come here?”

Kai’s bare skin is so warm against him Julian thinks he could cry.

The only light in the room seeps in from the washed-out moon through the open curtains (and Julian would never get up to close them, not now he’s got Kai curled up in his arms with the tiniest content smile on his face) and for a second he can almost pretend the past month hasn’t happened, allows his mind to verge near the dangerous trail that is imagining Kai knowing his secret and _loving him too_.

“You know Sam’s transferring to Groningen?” Kai says suddenly, almost silently, eyes fixated on the glint of the golden door handle. As much as Julian wants him to look at him, he can’t deny that Kai looks heart-stutteringly gorgeous from this angle.

“Yeah,” Julian says, equally quietly. “I got the text yesterday.”

“So did I,” Kai mumbles. There’s something unspoken weighing heavy in the air that was empty mere seconds before. Julian hates the implication. Kai slips further underneath the duvet, hand finding the curve of Julian’s stomach and resting there like it won’t start flames to start spewing out of the spot into Julian’s veins. Kai’s louder, voice ripping into the fire when he speaks through the blankets, “I want to stay here tonight.”

“Of course,” Julian says, praying Kai doesn’t notice the foreign thickness in his voice. He can’t stop himself, not when they haven’t done this since the night before Julian flew home from Barcelona.

Deep down, he knows they’re not the same, but if pretending is easier, they’re both willing to die trying. He might as well through his heart out along with the caution to the wind as he slips down to lie next to Kai, rests a palm atop his best friend’s upturned hand on his stomach and lets out a little sigh of something that feels the closest to contentment he’s felt maybe _ever_.

Kai’s breathing is methodical, slow, so much so Julian’s convinced he’s asleep. His heart might return to his body to leap out of his throat when the younger one finally speaks again.

“Do you remember the first time we ever hugged properly?”

“Yeah. Back when you were still shorter than me.”

“I still can’t believe that,” Kai sniggers, “you’re short as fuck.” He can’t dodge the slap that Julian directs at his stomach, scrunching his face up in disgust, and _god _Julian wants nothing more than to kiss the expression from his face and then rest his head in the crook of Kai’s neck. “I was sixteen and starstruck.”

“Alright, poet,” Julian says, but he can’t force humour into his voice when he can barely breathe. Something’s playing in his head, something gentle that makes those thoughts dismissed as impossible come racing back when Kai glances at him. He wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up right then, gasping and sweaty and Kai not by his side. He blinks, once, twice, but Kai’s still there, still warm, and Julian is _still in love_.

“Did your mind go blank again?” Kai smirks and it’s only then Julian realises he’s been lying with his mouth agape for the best part of a minute.

“No, fuck off. Is there any reason you brought up that hug?” He retaliates sharply, like he doesn’t care, like the memory of wrapping his arms around Kai isn’t inscribing itself behind his eyelids, like he doesn’t want Kai to keep looking at him like he currently is.

“No,” Kai says. He’s still staring at Julian.

Julian barely has the time to wish for Kai to kiss him, eyes sliding shut of their own accord, before he hears a gentle thud and there’s Kai, fast asleep against the pillow. His best friend’s capacity for sleeping has always astounded him, but for the first time he’s fucking _annoyed_. Especially now his mind has been tainted by memory, the moonlight is stunning, and Kai’s too-warm hand is still lying on his stomach. Still only inches from being intertwined with his own.

He doesn’t expect to fall asleep in the bed that is anything but big enough for the two of them to share, especially not with all those feelings flaring up and catapulting him relentlessly, but at some point, he must drift off. Kai’s climbing out of slumber when Julian sits up, blinking rapidly from the light streaming in through the open window, hand finally dropping away from Julian’s stomach and _holy shit _have they been holding hands all night?

Julian’s face burns when Kai peeks an eye open.

“What time is it?” Kai says, all gruff morning voice, messy hair, bleary eyes, something that Julian’s seen a lot of times and still has to think of what happened with Noah to stop his dick from getting hard.

“Like eight,” Julian answers, not looking at him because _holy fuck_, “Jannis and Jascha are probably already awake.”

“What sixteen-year-old is awake at eight in the morning on holiday?”

“Just because you used to sleep until eleven,” Julian retorts, grabbing Kai’s outstretched arm to pull him into a headlock. It ends up with one of those moments where they end up in a compromising position and Julian _could _lean down and press his lips against Kai’s, but then an ear-splitting crash emanates from downstairs, followed by a curse in a voice Julian immediately places as Jannis’, slicing right through their moment.

“Let’s go and see if Jannis is making breakfast,” Kai says, moving out from underneath Julian.

“God help us if he is,” Julian says to Kai’s tanned back.

Jannis and Jascha race ahead when they finally decide they’re ready to head down to the jetty. Some of their group are already there when they arrive, messing around on paddle boards and in the water, probably annoying everyone within a fifty-metre radius. Julian would spend time laughing at them (one of his friends has just stacked it on a paddle board and is now thrashing helplessly in the ocean), but Jannis comes over with a shit-eating grin and moves him so fast he’s tilting over the edge before he can work out what’s going on.

“Let me go, you asshole, or I’ll pull you in with me!” He exclaims, yanking himself free and almost falling right over the side. The metal of the jetty edge burns his toes.

“Chill,” Jannis says, following him back over to where Jascha and Kai are snickering at him. “What’s got you in such a mood this morning?”

“Yeah, Jule, why are you so moody today?” Kai taunts, squealing slightly when Julian squirts water at him.

“Piss off, I’m not in a mood,” he mutters. There’s a sickening sinking feeling that sits low in his stomach as he watches Kai raise his eyebrows before turning away and stripping his shirt off, chucking it in the vague direction of the group’s clothing pile before sprinting and doing a flip off the jetty edge.

Jannis has his camera out within about three milliseconds, snapping photos of Julian’s best friend as he climbs out of the water, droplets running down his neck.

The shock of the cold does just about enough to force blood to circulate around his body again. He’s flicking damp strands out of his eyes when he’s suddenly dunked underneath, salt water going up his nose inelegantly and Kai’s arms settling around his body in the submergence.

“Hi,” Kai giggles, “still mad?”

“Yeah, you fucker,” Julian grumbles, breaking free from his grip and splashing the younger one in retaliation before reciprocating Kai’s hold on him. “I missed you.”

“I did too, you idiot. Now, the boat’s on it’s way and I’d rather not drown,” Kai says, nodding in the direction of the fast-advancing boat their group had hired. “Let’s get out.”

Julian thinks he’s okay. He’s sure he can deal with Kai flipping off the end of the boat into the crystal water, flicking his hair off his forehead with that bright fucking grin beaming up at him. It shouldn’t cause his skin to prickle in such a way that throwing himself into the cold of the ocean can’t curb. And it certainly shouldn’t make him want to take Kai into the tiny bathroom on the boat and fuck him until someone forces them out.

His hands find Kai mid-afternoon, concealed to their distracted friends by the wave’s distortions. If they weren’t in the middle of the sea, too far from the shore to consider swimming, he might have thrown Kai a look and began to swim in the direction of the dock.

Kai just smirks and swims away to tip Jannis off the paddle board.

His brother meets his eyes when he comes back up coughing, looking dazed for a moment before his eyes widen and he begins spluttering unfathomably. Julian might have it in him to laugh, if it wasn’t for the creeping feeling of rising shame, maybe even duck Jannis back under, but he’s almost frozen save for his legs treading to keep him afloat. Kai’s already moved on. Julian can make out his laugh from the other side of the boat, blasting out loud and rendering everyone else mute.

He hopes no one in their group is paying him enough attention to notice how antsy he is the entire journey back to their neighbouring villas. He’s kicking a loose stone along the pavement, trying to hide how his eyes flick up to Kai every five fucking seconds by appearing preoccupied, until Jannis winks knowingly and mouths something like “we’re going to stay in our room until we go out tonight.”

Once Julian lets them into the villa, his brothers head upstairs. Julian follows Kai out onto the patio.

“You’re not swimming again, are you?” He laughs as Kai strips his damp shirt off. “We’ve been in the ocean all day.”

“Maybe I’m related to Ariel or some shit,” Kai retorts, interrupting his own sentence by diving into the water and doing a few lazy strokes before continuing. “Are you going to join me or what?”

A drying curl falls over Julian’s forehead from where he hasn’t styled it after swimming, the slight smell of salt enough to make his stomach curl slightly, but then Kai rolls in the water, miles of skin on his back glistening in the early evening sun, and Julian has to jump in because he can feel the blood starting to malform into flames and eat up the blood south.

Kai’s waiting for him when he breaks through the glassy surface.

“Seems like you are,” he remarks, spraying Julian with water before swimming towards the little waterfall structure. He cuts through the water effortlessly, Julian following him like Kai’s wrapped a rope around his waist.

Gentle watery mist brushes over his skin when he follows Kai’s lead, settling on the little ledge underneath the water, acting like he isn’t aware of the tension that’s balanced on the most precarious of knife edges. Even when he lost Kai in the blue-green potential abyss, the younger one always turned up next to him.

“Hey,” Kai says, way too quietly for two people who are alone, “where’s Jannis and Jascha?”

“Jannis said they’re going to be in their room for a while, I don’t know why,” Julian says, hoping Kai will dismiss the blush he can feel forming on his cheeks as the sun kissing his skin. He could tip the balance, slice through the tension that is tangibly thick now, escalate things quickly and have Kai weak underneath the water in a matter of moments.

He should be used to how terrifying how badly he wants it is.

Kai isn’t speaking, isn’t even looking at him. He’s staring at his reflection in the water, or maybe he isn’t, maybe he’s staring deeper than that, Julian can’t tell because Kai’s got that blank look on his face that he’s adopted whenever they ended up fucking (the thought sends a shiver down Julian’s spine in time with a harrowing droplet of water). He looks at him until Kai finally glances back.

He cuts Kai off,

“Is everything okay?”

Kai looks down, then out at the view, anywhere but Julian’s face and there’s even the slightest wet glint in his eyes that makes Julian want to obliterate himself in a pit of fire. 

“Why am I doing this to myself?” Kai mumbles when he thinks Julian can’t hear. He opens his mouth to ask him what the fuck _that _is supposed to mean, maybe even to drown out the thoughts that taunt him about not knowing what Kai is thinking at all anymore with his own voice, but Kai cuts him off with a hand placed on the inside of his thigh.

“K-Kai,” he gets out, “what do you---,”

Kai shushes him, water splashing around him as he floats to balance himself half on top of Julian. There’s a surge of morals, breaking him into Kai-related sobriety for the tiniest second as he struggles against the tidal onslaught of his best friend, screaming into the tsunamic void that this isn’t right.

It’s like he’s submerged, water piling on top of him and pushing him down, away from sanity, away from being able to _fucking speak_. Kai can’t, or won’t, hear him.

Petrifying sensations of mind and body dissociating capture him as his processing finally manages to shake itself to life and he’s briefly aware that he’s painfully hard and leaking through his swimming shorts already as Kai glances his entire body over his. He wonders if this is what drowning feels like, helpless as the water rises up against its victim, he’s helpless as Kai’s fingers run along his body, experiences the moment that the victim gives up and accepts that _this is it_, like he does when he lets go of everything he should be holding onto just to let himself feel Kai. Let Kai feel him.

“How are you so affected by this?” Kai mumbles into his neck, the water pouring over the stone ledge sounding like a cacophonous symphony that reminds him of how fucking destructive Kai Havertz is, “if I’d known I’d have had you fuck me somewhere that wasn’t one of our bedrooms.”

“I--,” Julian says, before feelings get him again, “you’re okay with doing this here?”

Kai rolls his hips against Julian’s stomach and he can’t bite back the groan that is definitely too loud for somewhere that is semi-public, and definitely not appropriate for them to be doing this. There’s so many definites that Kai writes over like they’re never there with the simplest swipe of a thumb over the clothed head of Julian’s dick, he’s can’t be convinced that he isn’t going to wake up in a moment with come staining the inside of his underwear and Kai in another room entirely, hating him.

“Why are you doing this?” He groans out, ending his question with a gasp because that fucker has slipped a hand under the waistband of his swimming shorts and is tracing patterns on the skin of Julian’s belly. 

“Because I saw the way you were looking at me earlier,” Kai says, sounding so unbothered Julian doesn’t know if he wants to punch him or pull him in and make out with him until neither of them can breathe. Until Kai knows what it’s like to be drowning too. Kai looks like he’s about to continue with some profound observation, maybe some offhand comment about Julian leaving because he hasn’t really made enough of those to justify the running away shit he pulled that afternoon in Barcelona, and no, Julian can’t handle that right now, not when he’s so close to being so far gone. “And yes, I am okay with doing this here.”

“I asked that like five--, _fuck, Kai,_” Julian whines.

His shoulders rub against the tiled edge of the pool as Kai finally wraps a hand around his dick. It’s disconcerting, the fact that Kai is stroking him gently like this is just another one of those nights, so much so that for a moment, when Kai flicks his wrist _just-like-that _in the way he recently discovered sends Julian into about a million levels of overdrive, he isn’t sure where the fuck on Earth he is.

Aside from the hand curled on his cock, stroking tantalisingly slowly like Kai is deliberately dragging this out like he’s getting off on the thrum of potentially getting caught, none of Kai is touching him. Julian can’t see through the ripples of water and the white dots speckling his vision, but he has no idea if Kai’s even a quarter as fucked as he is.

The weight of the world lies in the water as he tries to move his hand to grab Kai’s waist.

“Touchy,” Kai smirks, stroking a little faster like he knows exactly how Julian’s going to react, but then his body moves to settle on Julian’s. 

Julian wants to respond with something smart that will make Kai drop his eyelids and pull a face at him, but he also knows Kai is a little shit and would definitely stop touching him and he can’t have that. He has no idea what time it is, hours could’ve gone past and Jannis and Jascha could be waiting by the front door, too concerned over what they might find to go and search for him and Kai. Kai’s blocking the sun, sending out bursts of white light that frame him and that’s the sentiment that sticks in his mind as his stomach clenches.

Kai must realise what’s happening, it’s impossible for him not to when he’s become so intoned into even the tiniest flicker of Julian’s eyes (but his literacy stops there, it must do, there’s no way they’d still be like this if Kai was actually telepathic), because suddenly Julian’s collapsed against the waterfall, orgasm fast receding and Kai is swimming away.

“What the fuck,” he chokes out when he catches his breath and Kai is already out the pool, rubbing at his dripping hair with a towel. There’s an obvious bulge in his shorts that makes Julian’s dick twitch as he garners strength to follow him. His legs tremble as he climbs out of the water. “What did you do that for?”

“As much I was enjoying the view,” Kai laughs, throwing a towel that settles on Julian’s head weirdly. “I don’t think the lads would forgive us if you actually came in there.”

“Fuck you,” Julian says, mussing his hair when he rips the towel from his head. Even walking across the stone slabs feels weird, his body hyper-alert of itself like he normally is right before he comes, sensations strangely amalgamated by the bitter drop of disappointment.

He wonders what Kai would do if he attempted all the things that he wants to do to him. He almost finds out, when Kai collapses down onto the sofa in the living room, half looking like he’s about to switch the television on and half raising an innocuous eyebrow in Julian’s direction. It’s not long before Julian’s grasped a fistful of the younger one’s shirt and is dragging him up the stairs and into his bedroom.

“Someone’s desperate,” Kai remarks once they’ve fallen back against the white sheets, Julian gasping heavily.

“Just get me off,”

“Whatever you say,” his voice is singsong, painful, the audio to the glancing touches peppered over Julian’s still-damp skin, the this-isn’t-enough that threatens to leap out of Julian’s chest with his heart.

All this and he’s still got the glint in his eye that spells nothing but innocence.

“More,” Julian croaks out, back straining to try and get something more defined out of Kai’s touches. He knows Kai is just teasing him for his arousal, that the younger one will give him what he needs eventually, maybe Kai’s actually trying to make him beg loud enough for his brothers to hear him, the little shit. 

“Manners,” Kai chastises, breaking his touch altogether and _shit_, that’s maybe the closest Julian’s ever been to agony.

(Except when he saw the look on Kai’s face that night in his hallway.)

“Shit, Kai, please,” he begs, playing along because he really does have to drown his thoughts out now. There’s a sense that Kai might know what he’s thinking, that even though he can’t decipher Julian’s feelings, maybe the sentiments of guilt at his betrayal are highlighted in bold italics across his face. _“Kai,”_

“Wow,” Kai breathes. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

The last time Kai had him like this was the night they kissed, when Julian thought everything was coming together. He knows it’s not possible to live in one moment forever, but if he could, he’d damn well try to make it be that one. 

One where his past, the people he’s known, the secrets he has, when all of that doesn’t matter. One where it was just him and Kai.

He loses the ability to think when he comes.

Kai’s rubbing his back and mumbling something that sounds like English sweet nothings when he finally collects himself. It’s enough to almost put Julian to sleep before Kai says something like “don’t fall asleep on me now,” in a tone that is a little too raspy to come across as a joke.

When his hands settle on Kai’s inner thigh, moving him gently to the edge of the bed as Julian slides onto the floor, he can’t even focus on the choked-off moan Kai unleashes because he’s too busy imagining what his legs would look like if Julian could bite as many hickeys as he wanted to. Kai’s swimming shorts almost hit him square in the face in his haste to get them off.

“What is it with you and throwing things at me today?” He finds the strength to joke, even giggle when Kai flicks him off, unimpressed.

For all his poker face, Kai’s as hard as Julian was. His slit is wet when Julian swipes a thumb across it.

“God,” Kai gets out, and that’s it, all his façade of nonchalance has vanished completely. It’s always been the hottest thing Julian could ever imagine, because Kai does this _every fucking time_, acts like Julian doesn’t affect him and the moment his walls finally collapse elicits this rush that Julian craves from the moment it finishes washing over him. Maybe it’s because it’s the deepest insight he ever gets into Kai’s complex emotions, or maybe it’s just because Kai is so beautiful, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

His fingers are ghosting along the length of Kai’s dick as he touches all over the skin of Kai’s legs. The younger one has thrown himself back against the mattress, muttering to the ceiling about something Julian is too caught up in him to catch. 

He finally tightens his grip when Kai lets out a moan that Jannis and Jascha are _definitely _going to make jokes about later.

They’ve done this a million times, yet somehow Kai’s moans change into gasps of surprise when Julian licks along his cock. There’s the slight, unfamiliar taste of salt and chlorine that instantly activates his cringe sense, but then he catches a glimpse of Kai’s scrunched face from how his best friend has slumped and _fuck it, he can deal with a slightly strange taste._

His cheeks hollow of their own accord and Kai’s hips snap off the bed.

“Jule, _fuck_,” Kai gets out, no disdain for the fact they’re not alone, “I missed this, holy _shit_,”

He thrusts involuntarily and Julian chokes. It’s violent, and pretty uncomfortable if it wasn’t for the fact Kai is so fucking sensitive and moans again.

He’s missed having Kai like this. Even since the night on national team duty, since when everything’s been _fine_, Kai’s been reserved, subdued, right up until now. Julian thinks this might be the most responsive Kai’s ever been.

He prays it’s not a precursor for it all to come crashing down. It’s been going too well for what he did. He’s surprised Kai hasn’t ditched him with no explanation yet.

Maybe he’s cottoned on, and he’s plotting the way to break Julian’s heart in the most painful way.

Maybe he’s just trying to forget, like Julian is.

Julian will never know, because for all their compatibility, he’s not telepathic, and Kai never tells him what’s going on with him. The closest he ever gets is the stuff Kai gets out when he’s in the throes of orgasm.

As if his best friend is riding his stream of consciousness, he comes viciously down Julian’s throat. It’s like nothing has happened after that, save for Kai smirking as he points out the bit of come still on the corner of Julian’s mouth.

He thinks Kai might have said something to him when he came, but he’d be fucked if he could understand anything with all the shit he can’t fucking get out of his head. Part of him wants to catch the next flight back to Dortmund, text Jannis and Jascha to have a great time in his absence, but not only could he imagine the hurt on Jascha’s face, but also the comments Kai wouldn’t be afraid to voice.

Running away again. It’s all he ever does now.

“We’re going out tonight?” Kai says, nodding at Julian’s monotone response. He can’t make his voice match Kai’s, not when his best friend still has the tell-tale slight struggle for breath laced in his voice. Julian wants to focus on it, try and feel the definitely edited memory of Kai’s lips pressed desperately against his own, tries to hear the thrum of kiss-bitten highs that spiked in Kai’s voice that night. 

He lives in that night so much it’s tarnished, ruined, plasticised by his own fucking imagination, yet Kai probably has no idea it’s been dissected within an inch of its life. It wouldn’t surprise him to discover Kai only ever thinks of that night with Julian displaced for someone else.

“I’m going to go and get ready. Meet you downstairs in twenty?” Kai says, barely even stopping to pull his shorts on as he leaves the room. There’s no time to protest, no time to groan out an “I’ll meet you there later,” and then inevitably fall asleep, because the door’s shut and he can already hear the witty comments flying out from the unmistakable voices of his brothers.

Eventually, it’s only the fact his sheets smell so strongly of Kai that forces him into the shower and to get changed. He’s still running a hand through his hair to get it to stay when he makes his way down into the living room.

“I’m not surprised you needed a showe---,” Jannis begins, shutting himself up when Julian shoots him a particularly venomous glance that is definitely not because the other option is turning into a stuttering mess. “Bro, what’s up with you?”

“What’s your plans tonight, Jascha? I told Jannis to stay home with you, but---,”

“And I said I would, because I wanted you and Kai to have some time to yourselves. I’m kind of regretting my decision now, though.”

“I appreciate it, Jan. And it’s not like, you know,” he says, trailing off because Kai has just walked into the room and _fucking hell _Julian feels sixteen-years-old when the thoughts that he’d have no problem doing Kai again floats into his mind.

“Not like what?” Jannis mocks.

“Never mind,” he says, stuffing his phone and wallet into the pockets of his jeans. “They’re probably waiting for us.”

The sun is still well up as they begin the walk in the direction of their chosen nightclub. One of their friends is talking about all the girls he is planning to pull on the dancefloor, oblivious to the eyerolls from practically everyone in their group (save for Kai, who looks strangely pale for some reason).

“Everything okay?” He says quietly as they walk along the shorefront. “You’re kind of quiet.”

“Yeah,” Kai answers far too quickly, “I’m just tired and saving my energy for later. Hey, is that Max Meyer?”

“Where?” Julian asks, craning his neck to look at the waterside path below them. There’s a few people strolling loudly, the rhythmic clack of heels from a couple of girls, but no sign of Max. He’s wondering where Kai’s got that idea from when he sees Kai roll his eyes and point at someone in the distance.

“Over there!”

Julian’s only been to London a handful of times, but he’s heard enough of the stupid dialect to distinguish the English drawl of one of the guys in ‘Max’s’ group, yelling something at one of the others with a tone that definitely sounds on the way to drunk. The guy Kai claims is Max has all of the characteristic traits, right down to the height deficit Julian remembers Leon being the only one who managed to avoid death if he dared mock it, the new skinhead haircut Julian’s seen on Instagram. Tattoos snake up his arm.

“Could be,” Julian dismisses, sniggering at Kai who is peering with his eyes narrowed far too intently, “stop staring. What if it isn’t him?”

“Don’t need to worry about that,” Kai replies, breaking out into a smile. “Look.”

Julian spots the exact second Max notices him walking alongside Kai. He doesn’t know the extent of Kai and Max’s friendship, whether they even spoke to each other after that training camp in Berlin where Julian and Kai first met, but he can’t miss the way Max’s expression hardens when he meets Julian’s eyes. It’s a world of difference to the twenty-one-year-old who tried to hide the concern behind his eyes as he stepped onto the balcony of their flat in the Olympic Village.

The ex-Schalke midfielder isn’t walking towards them, but his group of tipsy Londoners have left him behind in their haste to get to what Julian assumes is the same club as his group. Max is stationary, like a tiger waiting to pounce on its prey.

“Hi,” Kai says, once they’re in earshot. Julian wonders if Kai can sense the tension that multiplies tenfold whenever Max looks at him. “Good to see you.”

“Yeah, you too. I was just going to the club with----,” Max gestures wildly at the empty air. “Where did those fuckers go?”

“They carried on walking,” Julian says.

“Thanks,” Max answers, voice an awkward cross between unsure and distrustful. Julian knows it hasn’t been easy for him, his downfall at Schalke was dissected viciously in national team training where people know Max won’t make it back for a while. His move to Dortmund pales in comparison, he thinks as the three of them start to follow the group towards the club, to the confusion surrounding Max heightened by the sudden breakup with Leon.

_Leon._

“You’re thinking about _him_,” Max spits in his direction, “something he’s told you to tell me if you ever saw me again.”

“What?” Julian feels like a kid who’s been caught with a hand in the cookie jar under Max’s accusations. 

“Leon,” it drips like venom from Max’s lips, “he’s told you to tell me something, hasn’t he?”

“No,” Julian lies. He remembers Leon’s whines about wanting to go and find him, not knowing _where _to find him, but he can’t bombard Max with that when the older one still looks pretty close to punching his lights out.

“Surprising. He always got other people to tell me shit.”

The air thins so quickly Julian’s pretty sure both Max and Kai can hear him choke. Max’s words knife him, before he can feel Kai’s pointed gaze glancing down on his, and he’d rather be anywhere else than trapped in between the two of them.

Just as he’s deciding whether he should just throw himself off the cliff into the rising tide, or drink so much he gets alcohol poisoning, the three of them arrive at the club (where their groups have joined together and are now chatting in broken English about something to do with girls) and Kai holds the door open with a smile that feels so out of place for Julian’s still-prominent fears.

“You’re buying the first drinks,” Kai says when they reach the bar, jumping on Julian’s back in a manner that is slightly too promiscuous for their stone-cold sober state. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Who says I’m drinking?” Julian shoots back, brandishing money at the bartender and ordering a third drink for Max, who has apparently re-joined them after ditching his jacket in the cloakroom. He’s deep in conversation with Kai by the time Julian turns back with three glasses of vodka in his hand, to the point he ends up slipping away and finding one of Max’s friends to talk to.

Music throbs like agony in the back of his head when he breaks away from the merged group and half-collapses into the bathroom. He’s dousing his face in water to try and rid it of the spinning (the chequered floor isn’t helping, _fuck_), when he hears a moan emanating from one of the locked cubicles, that he thinks sounds like Kai before deciding it doesn’t, but it’s too late. Jealousy stings more than the shots he throws down to rid himself of the thoughts.

He wonders if Max and Kai are evading him until Max almost collides head-on with his shoulder. Within a second, it’s obvious that he’s out-of-his-mind drunk, even Kai is looking hazier than normal, and it would strike fear into Julian’s heart save for the fact Kai has fumbled for his hand and is gripping it tight.

For a moment, it feels like 2017 again. If Leon was here, grinding unabashedly on Max while Julian slid a hand around Kai’s damp waist, he could almost close his eyes and convince himself.

The scent of alcohol and sweat lingers over Kai’s skin in that scent that has always slowly driven Julian insane. It’s that kind of indescribable that he can never quite conjure up when he’s alone in his room, Kai unable to be with him for whatever reason, the reality he’s confined himself to the second Kai disappears through airport security tomorrow.

Something must come loose because Julian isn’t expecting his hand to brush across the skin of Kai’s lower back, and Kai’s eyes to flicker in some messy combination of drunk and aroused. It’s far too intimate for where they are, surrounded by strangers of all nationalities and _Max _(who is definitely narrowing his eyes again), so Julian pulls his fingers away from Kai’s back like it’s on fire and moves to fondle the top button of his shirt, fluttering over Kai’s collarbone and revelling in the little gasp for air he can only hear because Kai’s in his space. 

He can’t hear the music over the thumping of people on the dancefloor, yet he’s tuned into Kai and his breathing like they’re back in one of their nights alone, the small hours when he’d lie awake and listen to Kai breathe, stroke a hand across his face and wish that things were different.

He remembers sixteen year old him, smiling at Lotta in her makeshift office at the Oberneuland training grounds and assuming that was the trace of the concept of love, the glow that faded the night of his Abiball as Noah papered over it with his dominance, the Kai held his hand and dragged him into the abyss when he was looking the other way. It’s deeper than he thought, he has no idea where the bottom is, only that he’s hurtling headlong towards it every time Kai looks down at him with that fucking little half-smirk.

He’s so distracted by him it takes a second for him to register that Kai’s actually said something to him.

“I think we need to talk to Max about Leon.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? You saw how he reacted when he so much as thought I was thinking about him.”

“You told Leon to fix things with him months ago.”

“And he didn’t. Kai, there’s evidently bad blood between them,” Julian says, wrenching him arm free from where Kai has locked onto him like a vice (he tries not to miss his warmth), “I know Leon wants me to, but I’m not sure.”

“Leon asked you to?”

“Ages ago. He tried to track Max down unsuccessfully.”

“I’m at least getting an address,” Kai says, melting into the crowd of people before he’s even finished speaking. Bodies crowd him, the music rips back into his head like the DJ has blown the speakers out, and he can’t find Kai until he’s broken free of the breathing, anxiety-inducing mess and spots Max, Kai, and some of the English guys standing by the door.

“Don’t go too far, innit,” one of the lads says.

“Nah, just outside the door. It’s really fucking hot in here anyway.” Max says, sounding way less slurred than Julian remembers, starting to lead Kai away when Julian blocks the path. “What are you doing?”

“Coming with you. There’s a cliff and you’re both drunk.”

“Whatever,” Max brushes past him and if it wasn’t for Kai pulling him along, maybe Julian would stay until they’re out of sight and maybe actually throw himself off the cliffside like he’s been thinking about since the walk up here, but then he sees the flicker of the strobe lights catching in Kai’s eyes and _fuck_, Julian’s stumbling out of the club to keep his hands on him.

“What the fuck do you want?” Max grumbles and it’s only then Julian even remembers he’s there. Alcohol rises like a reminder in his throat, burning vomit threats when he thinks of Leon and the helpless tone to his voice when he admitted that he missed Max. There’s a resurgence of that terrifying venom in the former Schalke player’s gaze, directed solely at Julian, and for the first time since they saw each other, Julian wonders if it has something to do with Kai.

“I wanted to ask you how you’re getting on,” he gets out before Max can spit out something else in their direction.

“Fine. I’m in the best league in the world now.”

“Yeah, but,” Kai says, voice trailing off by itself when whatever the chilly demeanour emanating from Max reaches him, and Julian’s about to act on the surge of anger melting the ice in his veins when he remembers it’s _not his right to do it anymore._ Not in front of Max Meyer. It takes him so long to make a fucking decision that Kai’s already plucked up the courage to continue whatever he was saying, “that’s not what I meant. How’s your personal life?”

“Why the fuck do you want to know?”

“No one knows anything about you anymore. You were there when I went to the under-seventeen Euros and now…. no one sees you.”

Julian isn’t expecting Max to look _spent _when he finally garners the courage to look up.

“Sometimes things don’t work out like you want them to,” Max says in a voice that Julian imagines would be a lot harsher if the words were directed at him, “I’d have thought you’d know that by now.”

“Yeah,” Kai says, eyes dropping to the floor and the feeling of not being privy to everything that’s going on inside of Kai’s head anymore douses Julian with the same vicious intent it did the first time. He can’t hear whatever Kai says afterwards, it isn’t intended for him, isn’t even intended for Max, just Kai and the floor and serves to amplify pain like the DJ is blasting it through the loudspeakers.

Max has the mercy to wait until the buzz of Kai’s voice silences.

“And, what are you doing here?”

Julian couldn’t articulate an answer even if he had one. He can’t voice the jealousy that plagued him in the club, the overwhelming desire to be in touching distance of Kai all the time, because he doesn’t want Max’s opinion on that, or for Kai to even know that’s going through his head. For all the turmoil, he doesn’t want his departure to hurt his best friend any more than it already has.

“We need to talk about Leon.”

Julian doesn’t remember saying it, the only confirmation being the bitter aftertaste of regretful words staining his tongue, and the fact Max has grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt collar and pushing him up against a wall.

He’d be scared if he didn’t think he deserved it.

“Why?” Max says, before something in him connects and his grip on Julian loosens. He’d breathe a sigh of relief if it wouldn’t sound stupid, maybe collapse against a wall because he knows Kai would find that funny, but it isn’t the place.

Kai is looking at him like he’s a stranger.

“Why, what?”

“Why the fuck do you think you have the right to talk to me about Leon when you did the same fucking thing to Kai? I don’t want to talk to you about how I feel about that man, because even though you should know how the consequences of your actions feel, you should spend your time speaking to him about how to manage being such a fucking snake!”

Julian wants to tell him about all the conversations he’s had with Leon, maybe that’d calm Max down slightly or even begin the road to rectifying the rut in whatever was between them, but he’s too tied down on Max alluding to Kai _having feelings for him._

Which comes crashing down the moment he meets Kai’s eyes and sees the way the younger is shaking his head.

“Um--, I---,” he tries to say, but it’s like the word guilt is everywhere. Pounding out through the door of the club in the beat of the music. Rippling through the waves off the coastline. Written all over Max’s face, scrunched up with anger, but worst of all, morphed into Kai’s being, the remorse, the pain, it’s all there and he’s so fucking guilty. Max is right and Julian doesn’t know how to handle it, so he does the only thing his body can think of.

He’s ran three miles before the alcohol allows him to catch up with himself.

He left Kai behind on the doorstep of the club, knows his best friend wouldn’t follow him even if he wanted to, his compassion would make him stay with Max, try to calm the devastation that racked through his body when he screamed at Julian and severed through the friendship the two of them formed those mornings in Brazil. He spent his entire life wishing that his past would just fade like it happened to someone else, and when it’s finally worth savouring, he fucks it up again. Severed through the only type of trust thought he had anymore.

Dark vomit splatters over the drain. The stench is sobering, useful when he collapses on the curb and stares at the empty houses across the road, occupants out at the clubs and probably not having their lives falling apart with so much as a look at their best friend.

Then again, not everyone willingly chooses to leave their best friend behind.

The thought causes him to throw up in the drain again. Tears sting his face, burn behind his eyelids like his body is slowly setting itself on fire and Kai’s the only thing that can put him out, but Max is right. Julian doesn’t deserve Kai to relieve him of anything.

He has no idea how Kai forgave him. How fucking him in a hotel room on his twentieth birthday meant Kai suddenly understood him.

It briefly occurs to him that he never asked, and the thought is enough to at least pull him to his feet.

Winds howl through the palm trees surrounding him as he makes his way back to the villa. He can feel his phone buzzing in his back pocket, maybe it’s their group asking him where the fuck he is once Kai and Max returned to the club, maybe it’s videos of Kai and Max drunk-slurring shit talk about him that he wouldn’t be able to dispel even if it was false, he can’t bring himself to care. He just wants to sleep and feel Kai’s arms looped around his waist for their last night together.

Kai might hate him, he has no idea.

Jannis is at the door when he stumbles over the threshold, arms out to grab Julian like he’s expecting him to be piss drunk and not half heartbroken. He’s asking if Julian’s okay and where Kai is, and Julian wishes he could enunciate more than a few broken sobs and drown out the loop of his best friend’s name that throbs like a never-ending taunt through his head. It’s been that way since they met and since Julian realised that he was falling in love, but the rollercoaster-ride, cliché flutters in his stomach have died and replaced with a hollow pain that makes Julian want to stab himself just to rid himself of it.

His brother holds his back as he climbs the stairs. Jascha’s comes out of his room to meet him on the landing, face falling with hurt concern when Jannis shoves him away and Julian is the worst brother in history for doing this to the both of them. They shouldn’t be babying him, he should be mocking them about all the shit they got up to when he was the only one old enough to remember (he pointedly ignores the fact he missed all of Jascha’s embarrassing teenage stories because he really would break down in a grovelling heap of pain if he did), but they’re sharing looks over his state while he traipses away from them again.

Sleep clasps him in limbo right until his door clicks open and Kai slides in beside him.

“I couldn’t leave you,” Kai whispers, breath brushing over Julian’s forehead and he would kill to open his eyes, see the way Kai might be looking at him, but he can’t. He knows Kai thinks he’s asleep. Kai wouldn’t be doing this if he thought he was awake. “Not tonight. I got Max’s address, by the way. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”

Julian doesn’t receive it until he gets a text comes through three days later, when Kai is in Sardinia and he’s about to fly home to Dortmund.

He hates the way his heart skips anyway.

* * *

** _london, england_ **

“Should I go undercover or am I safe from being lynched?” Leon says by way of greeting when he strides over to a half-asleep Julian in the Dortmund airport departure lounge. Seriously, Julian wanted to punch Leon when he sent the tickets through and Julian saw the nine in the morning departure time, but he does suppose Leon is desperate and desperate people do crazy things.

“You’re a former Schalker and now a Bayern player, bro. You being safe here is about as likely as Jerome shutting up about Robert for more than two minutes.”

“Point taken,” Leon laughs, bumping Julian’s fist as he slips into the neighbouring seat. “My flight from Munich was delayed; I swear to God that I’ve never been so worried about missing a connection in my entire life.”

“You could’ve just called ahead, they’d hold a flight back for Leon Goretzka.” Julian deadpans, too drowsy to expect the punch Leon aims at his head.

“Quiet! I’m in disguise!”

“You decided then. Plus, that’s a pretty shit disguise,” he grumbles, pointing at Leon’s monochrome tracksuit. “Anyone that cares enough to give you a second glance would recognise you.”

“That’ll be hard, given I’m so attractive. I’m irresistible. The people fall at my feet,” Leon jokes.

“Need I remind you we’re going to see someone who you’re madly in love with still and who broke it off with you when you left for Bayern?”

“Touché,” the older one grins, pulling out his phone and taking one of those god-awful Snapchat videos he insists on making at every single opportunity. There isn’t long until they’re called for boarding for their flight, definitely not long enough for Julian to get some much-needed extra minutes of sleep to emotionally prepare him for whatever Leon and Max are going to put him through over the next couple of days before starting pre-season at Brackel the day after he returns.

Brackel still feels distant; a hazy dream that Julian’s sure could slip away should he only open his eyes. It’s harsh reality, its blinding yellow doors that he’s going to pass through in a matter of days, will clobber him on the head like someone’s pranked him the second the moment arises, he knows that, but for the final three days of summer, he’s just Julian. Julian, who’s inevitably going to be third-wheeling when Max’s stubbornness eventually melts into hyper-obsession, because Kai refused the invitation to join them, excusing himself by saying something about his parents and Aachen.

The boarding call comes before the coffee Leon brings him kicks into effect, so he’s slumped over in the uncomfortable plane seat, forced against the window by Leon’s over-excited bouncing.

“Calm the fuck down, Max might slam the door in your face,” he snaps.

“Bold of you to assume I haven’t thought of every possible situation that could potentially happen when that man opens the door to find me standing there,” Leon shoots back. “I thought my favourite scenario to imagine was him pulling me inside and pushing me against the front door, but with the way you’re acting, maybe I’d prefer it if he eviscerated you instead.”

“Charming,” Julian says, rolling his eyes and fixating his gaze on the window. The clouds are darkening threateningly, but London’s weather is supposed to be good. Maybe he’ll even manage to do some sightseeing while Leon and Max are… catching up.

He feels terrible when he hears a little sigh and turns back to see Leon, a shadow of the man he was mere moments ago, head thrown back against the seat. The scariest of thing all is the traces of tears in his friend’s eyes.

“Leon?” He says, “sorry, I didn’t mean to be so snappy.”

“It’s okay,” Leon sniffs, “I know I’m being annoying. This is just absolutely fucking terrifying.”

“I get it,” Julian manages to say over the surprise lump that’s formed in his throat. “Sorry again.”

“I told you, it’s okay. You’re sure he’s going to be home?”

“That’s what he told Kai.”

Leon seems to accept this and reclines back in his seat, plugging in his earphones and looking like he wants nothing more than to sleep. He had to talk Leon out of frogmarching directly to Max’s house without even checking into their hotel, but he can see the stress etching itself into the chasms of the Bayern midfielder’s face.

German rap is blowing his eardrums out and only Leon’s persistent tapping on his shoulder can get his attention. He isn’t sure how much longer he has left of the quite short flight to London, but judging by the scarily pale skin of his friend’s face, rushing further towards white noticeably, there isn’t long left.

“What’s up?”

“Tell me about Dortmund. I can’t stand this.”

“I haven’t started training yet,” he says, “so I’ll only know if it was the right choice for me then. It’s weird living without Jannis for the first time since he moved to Cologne.”

“Moving to Dortmund? Never the right choice,” Leon tries to joke, but his tone is all wrong. It sounds like nerves themselves have malformed into a serpent and is slowly spiralling around Leon’s vocal chords, making his voice strained, choked, betraying him and conveying everything he wants to keep secret. Julian knows the sensation from every single time Kai looked at him with that stupid fucking unreadable expression glinting in his green eyes.

“Of course you’d say that, you fucker.” Julian says. He can’t make himself ask Leon how he’s feeling. Leon would never tell him anyway.

He never dropped the trait that plagued him in Rio.

Julian never did either. Even Kai wasn’t always knowledgeable about the true extent of Julian’s crippling insecurities, despite the aura that dripped off him that always stabbed Julian through the heart. He knows Kai would’ve helped him, would’ve done anything for him back when everything was seamless on the surface between them. Their surviving label of ‘best friends’ seems so plastic compared to what they used to be.

“I hope it goes well for you, even though I do want Dortmund to be relegated.”

“The feeling is mutual for your excuse of a club,” Julian smiles, right in tune with the ding of the seatbelt sign flickering to life and the announcement of imminent landing. It slices through the slightest pretence that the pretext for their trip isn’t about concluding a silent saga that has consumed his friend’s life for the past couple of years, and the serpent that had relented its grip on Leon’s voice box slithers into a tighter grip than before.

“It’s going to be okay,” Julian whispers, trying to breathe steadily and give Leon something to mirror.

“What if he--- what if he doesn’t want me anymore?”

“I’ve told you that judging by what he said in Ibiza, he still does.”

“What if he was lying? What if you were misinterpreting shit because you were drunk? Then all of this would be a waste, and---,”

“If it is, then at least you’ll know. How long have you been overthinking about him?”

Leon blinks twice, three times, half looking like he’s a centilitre of oxygen away from passing out, and half like he’s seen a ghost. “Since when did you actually give good advice?”

“Fuck off and answer the question.” The feeling of descent rallies gently through Julian’s body as he sees the London skyline start to form beneath the clouds.

“I don’t need to answer that. You know the answer already.”

London is so oblivious to the magnitude of Leon’s predicament. It’s overcast, save for the tiniest splatter of blue poking through a particularly black cloud, people rushing through an amalgamation of traffic swerving on the roads as Julian and Leon stand on the pavement, taking in the non-stop atmosphere. It isn’t a long walk to their hotel, and Julian thinks Leon’s going to attract stares if he allows him to sprint along the street like the older one wants to, so he suggests strolling along the South Bank (the memories of the film he watched the night he first had sex with Kai resonates more painfully than he thought it would), admiring the London Eye to try and keep Leon calm.

His self-control drowns in the Thames as he picks his phone out of his pocket, sending a photo to Kai of the Bank before he can stop himself.

He spends way too long staring at the two black and yellow hearts Kai sends in response. It’s enough to make him trip over a bike lock and to at least pull a laugh from the deathly panic etched on Leon’s face. If it wasn’t for the fact Leon paid for the hotel, Julian would maybe consider shoving him in front of one of the buses.

“Are you going to need the bathroom for the next hour?” Leon blurts out almost the second they open the door to their room. Julian shakes his head, Leon murmuring something about showering and shaving before leaving Julian standing in a pristine hotel room, wondering what to do to pass the time before his thoughts are disturbed by a buzz in his pocket.

**Kai: **i wish i was with you

**Kai: **i love my family but aachen is so boring

**Kai: **do you remember when we played spurs in the ucl

**Kai: **and we ran away from the lads and spent the whole afternoon sightseeing

God, Kai was so young when that happened. Julian remembers the youth glowing from his skin as they climbed the stairs of a bus, the autumn wind blowing through the hair he so meticulously insisted on straightening back then, his laugh echoing through the side streets they raced down when they caught a glimpse of one of their teammates. He’d give anything for that now. A time before feelings got involved and poisoned everything innately.

**Julian: **i think i still have those photos of you by the crown in the tower of london somewhere

**Julian: **on my old phone

**Kai: **send them to me

**Julian: **i will

**Kai: **are you going to max’s today?

Julian’s response is interrupted by Kai’s face lighting up the screen with an incoming call. Glancing over at the closed bathroom door, he collapses onto one of the beds and answers.

“Hey,” Kai says.

“Hi,” Julian answers, feeling the smile spread uncontrollably across his face. “Yeah, Leon’s getting himself ready.”

“Be prepared to postpone the whole damn thing until tomorrow,” Kai deadpans. Julian laughs a little too loud.

“He’s nervous, leave him alone. How was Sardinia?”

“Really pretty,” Kai says. Julian can almost hear his mirroring smile. “Sophia really enjoyed it too. She liked the photo opportunities I think.”

Julian’s an idiot for the bitter pang of jealousy that he’s come to associate with the name of Kai’s best friend and public girlfriend, because she was there for him when Julian wasn’t. He’d heard enough about what she’d done for him during the international break, when Kai was chatting incessantly to Serge and Julian couldn’t tune out from him.

“Julian? Can you hear me?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” he stutters, “was just… listening to Leon singing in the shower.”

As if the Bayern midfielder is subconsciously following Julian’s conversation through the thunder of water, he starts belting out _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. _It’s ridiculous, and Kai laughs long enough for Julian to recompose and swallow down the dregs of jealousy.

“Please record that so I can send it around the entire national team,” Kai gasps between laughs.

“You’d shit yourself if you thought Manu was going to get a text from you,” Julian retorts, laughing at his own thought as he can almost see the pout Kai’s putting on right that second.

(He shoves the urge to kiss it off down.)

“Whatever,” Kai grumbles, before his voice goes from low to inaudible, the younger one taking the phone away from his ear. When he finally returns, voice carrying none of that faux-anger he had before, he says something about a message he needed to reply to.

Julian hopes his smile isn’t bashful or anything, because it might kill him slowly if it is.

“You’re sharing a hotel room with Leon, I assume?”

“Yeah, it was very short notice. At least I get a bed to myself.”

“He’ll be hoping you’ll get the entire room to yourself,”

“He didn’t say that,” Julian snorts, “but he’s definitely thinking it.”

“Yeah,” Kai swallows loudly. “How long is he going to be in the shower?”

“He told me to give him an hour.”

“Maybe there’s time…” Kai mutters. Julian isn’t sure if the shuffling that follows deafens a potential continuation of whatever he’s on about, but he’s got his attention anyway. “Aachen’s boring.”

“What are you doing there?”

“All my family are here, so I spend the time being infantilised by my siblings and being mocked by Jan. Oma and Opa are here too.”

“That’s nice. How are they?”

“They’re good. The lot of them can get tiring after a while.”

“Families can get that way. I have no idea how my parents coped with me and my brothers pissing each other off all the time,” Julian smiles fondly, homesick for a past he chose never to return to. The thought stings and he fights to change the subject before Kai can say anything else. “What are you up to?”

“Not much--, well, yeah, nothing. Just talking to you.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Kai’s voice is breathless, pitched at a much quicker speed than normal. “It’s just a bit,” another half-gasp, “hot in here.”

Julian’s eyes drift back to the bathroom on the other side of the room. Leon had warned him that he was going to be a while, and judging by the music his friend is blasting (thank fuck, because it’s sensuous and completely conceals the complete boner-killer that is Leon’s strangled-cat of a singing voice), is totally unaware of what Julian’s up to. The thrill of the risk prickles his skin underneath his t-shirt.

“Is it the kind of hot that can be dealt with?” He says, dropping his voice into that low tone he knows Kai will recognise, place, and respond to with that delicious groan like he always does.

“M-Maybe some of it is.”

“Where are you right now?”

“In my bedroom. Most of my family have gone on a walk, but Jan’s still here.”

“Is Jan with you?”

“No.”

“Well then, it’s not like he’s going to hear you speak if I ask you what you’re wearing right now.” It briefly occurs to Julian that he’s never attempted to have phone sex before, has never even sexted, and therefore has absolutely no idea how to go about this, but Kai seems to get him anyway.

“Not much,” Kai chokes out, “I had literally just got out of the shower when you texted me that message about the South Bank, but then I only had time to get semi-dressed before you got to your hotel.”

“That was almost half an hour later? What were you doing?”

“I’m not sure if,” Kai spikes into a tone that makes Julian physically _yearn _to be with him, “if, _fuck_, you’d want to know that.”

“I think you’ve got my attention,” Julian tries to melt his voice. Kai can’t see him, sound is the best thing they have to work with, and the least he can do is silently tip Kai off that he’s as into this as the younger one. His blood swims south, engulfing itself in firebombs and causing his dick to begin pressing increasingly uncomfortably against the front of his jeans. “Answer my question, Kai.”

“I was---,” Kai chokes again, and _shit_, if he keeps this up Leon’s going to re-enter the room to Julian trying to discard wet underwear. “—trying to decide whether or not to touch myself. There you go. Question answered.”

“I like that answer,” Julian drawls, “I especially like that you chose to message me instead, allowed me to be here for this.”

“I never said you’re allowed to be here for this,” Kai says, too desperate to be grumpy, “but now you’re here, might as well stay.”

“Then I will,” it’s so fucking charged. It’s like Kai is watching him, staring him down through the phone line. “I want to see your face, but I don’t think I could handle it without letting Leon know what the fuck is happening here.”

“Is that so bad?”

“I wouldn’t get to tease him about his shower-singing. You could never deny me that opportunity.”

“True. Just so I know,” the line goes quiet and there’s a horrifying moment where Julian thinks Kai’s decided to pull the ultimate cockblock and hang up on him, right up until Kai’s voice returns, “just so I know, what would you have done if you’d seen my face?”

“Fuck you. You know I would’ve moaned,” Julian feels the embarrassment creep into his face, but even thinking about Kai’s sweat-damp curls sticking to his face as he strokes his own dick is enough to make him almost groan anyway. “God, you’re such a narcissist.”

“You’re not here to make me feel amazing physically, so the least you can do is stroke my ego a little.”

“_Fuck_ you,” Julian says again.

“You want to,” Kai says and when did _Julian _become the desperate one? It’s a power dynamic that edges along the abyss of ridiculously hot, yet Julian can’t let himself tilt over the edge when he isn’t alone.

“Maybe I do. You’d like it if I did that, pressed you against your bed, or maybe mine here in London, fucked you quietly while Jan or Leon were in the next room with no idea what’s happening.”

“_Fuck_, Jule, I’m sorry, I need to---, can I---?”

The unmistakable sound of a shirt being pulled over a head reverberates through the speaker. It plays over and over in Julian’s mind, backing noise to the image of Kai, dick pulsing and leaking pre-come, a damp patch forming through his boxers as he lies flat against the bed. Julian’s never been to Kai’s house in Aachen, imagines his long frame on a too-small bed with posters of Ӧzil on the walls. He’s almost jealous of paper Mesut.

The thought is weird.

“What do you need?”

“Can I---,” Kai’s courage must waver slightly. It’s why, for all the pain that flared deeper every single time Kai touched his skin, Julian was so turned on the night of Kai’s birthday, when none of Kai’s inhibitions were in the fucking country. Even if it was anger and not the gentle relief that they normally swathed themselves in, Kai wasn’t insecure. He was dominant, and it was the most attractive thing Julian had ever seen.

“Yeah?”

“Can I touch myself, _please_?”

“You didn’t have to ask me.”

“I thought you might like it if I did,” Kai sighs, and that’s enough to make Julian unzip his jeans and glance a hand over the material of his boxers. He’d been so enraptured by the little noises Kai’s making (he never did this when they were together, and it’s _almost _okay, because if he had then Julian definitely would have come within a minute every single time), he hadn’t even felt his dick continue to get harder after the firebomb thought. Aroused jolts of his brain trying to catch up with his body cause a fizzing sensation he’d give up everything just to feel with Kai actually touching him.

“You’re right,” he gets out, mainly because this is equally about Kai and he knows the younger one will need as much stimulation as he does, yet doesn’t know what Kai takes out of his words. “I had to slide a hand under the waistband of my jeans.”

“Should I wait for you?” Kai asks.

“How hard would that be?”

“Depends how long you’re planning to not touch yourself for.”

“I don’t know, Kai… Leon is in the next room... and once I start, I’m not sure if I’d be able to stop.”

“Yeah, never mind,” Kai says, bitter disappointment dripping from his voice and _no_, that’s not what Julian wants, he wants Kai gasping and begging and making it so hard for him to stop himself. “Jan’s downstairs, I shouldn’t do this.”

“I never said you didn’t have to stop, or that I wouldn’t want to help you.”

“But--- this should be about the two of us,” Kai says, still sounding like he’s insanely affected by what’s going on between them. It elicits the tiniest moan from Julian in spite of himself. “_Fuck_, Jule, you’re supposed to be calming me down, not riling me up further.”

“Maybe I don’t want to do what I should,” Julian says, hoping the gritty feedback of the phoneline adds something to his voice that contorts Kai’s thoughts. “Anyway, in answer to your question, you shouldn’t wait for me.”

There’s another shuffling sound of Kai’s clothes against his bedsheets, before everything falls silent, save for the slight catch in Kai’s too-quick breaths. Julian ghosts a hand over the bulge in his underwear, he can’t not when any coherent thought is replaced by imagining the sprawled position Kai must be lying in that second, maybe his legs are spread, he has to _know_, he doesn’t have enough detail and it’s making his dick throb in want.

Want wins out. “What do you look like now?” He gasps out, even with the knowledge that if Kai can catch his breath long enough to form an answer, Julian is going to completely _fucked _at the description.

“I can’t----, not right now----, but can you tell me what you look like?”

Selfish instincts might twinge in disappointment at Kai’s refusal, but in fairness, what’s going on is now exclusively about Kai and if Julian wants to keep himself enclosed in the delicious noises the younger one is making, he needs to at least provide Kai with this.

“Okay, I don’t really know how to do this, but,” he stutters. “I’m lying on my bed and while I’m fully dressed, I had to undo the top of my jeans so I could touch my dick through my underwear because you’re so fucking attractive. I’m gonna have to change this shirt too.”

“Why?” Kai asks. Every time he speaks, every time Julian forgets how desperation sounds on his best friend’s tongue, the sensation new every time and his dick twitches of its own accord.

“I can’t stop myself. I want to touch myself so badly,” he tries not to cringe at his own words, “and I’m all sweaty.”

“Is your hair falling into your eyes?”

“Yeah. I keep having to swipe it out.”

“God, I can just imagine that, you---,” Julian doesn’t hear what Kai says next because the music in the bathroom suddenly switches off and he can hear Leon picking his stuff up.

He feels terrible when he raises the phone back to his ear and says, “Kai. Leon’s out of the bathroom. I have to go.”

“_FUCK,” _Kai yells, definitely loud enough for his brother to hear if he’s still downstairs and bothering to listen. “FUCK, why now?”

“I don’t know. Listen, tonight, if he stays at Max’s. Tonight, I’m going to video call you and you’re going to get the best phone sex of your life.”

“You owe me,” Kai says, just as Leon exits the bathroom. The line falls dead before Julian can get over the humiliation of being caught with a half-hard dick and sweat patches dotted on his t-shirt.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that, purely because you’re doing this for me,” Leon says, “go and get changed. We’re not going to see Max with you in that state.”

• • • • • • 

Julian’s cheeks burn long into their tube journey to Max’s house. It doesn’t help that Leon is side-eyeing him, gives him a teasing smirk every single time their eyes meet. If it wasn’t for the fact the purpose of their train journey is probably racking each of his nerves individually, Julian would say something spiteful about Leon fucking Max. He doesn’t need to, though. He can see, written in Leon’s mockery, an underlying jealousy that is probably the only reason he isn’t attempting to leap off the train at every single stop. 

It’s early-afternoon by the time they disembark the train.

“Google tells me it’s a fifteen-minute walk through a park,” Leon says, gesturing at some ornate gates across the road with an intensity that makes Julian worry that he’s going to step out into oncoming traffic in his haste to get to Max’s. It takes a lot of dissuasion to not hold Leon’s hand and rub his thumb over the curve of his wrist like Julian does with Kai when he’s scared.

Even when Kai was making him desperate a couple of hours ago, Julian feels his absence more acutely as they make their way across the park, pretending to admire the fountains as they go. Leon’s pace is too pointed to fool anyone.

“Are you coming with me to the door?” Leon asks, the nerves in his voice grounding Julian because the only two other times he’s heard it to that extent was in Rio, and before their heart-breaking game against South Korea. Julian’s concerned Leon might run away if he doesn’t accompany him, so he nods, hopes it’s what Leon wants. “Okay,” the older one says, voice swimming in the direction of an affluent estate, “it’s down there.”

“Leon,” Julian says, “breathe. He’s not going to kill you.”

“He’ll probably try,” Leon tries to joke, as the traffic lights change to let them across the road, but it’s too charged to be funny. “He isn’t as understanding as Kai is.”

Julian wants to question him on what the fuck he means by that, but it’s evident from the crease in his eyebrows that Leon’s mind is already elsewhere. Max’s house is not a long walk once they pass the street sign, only a couple of doors before Leon comes to a stop.

“It’s that one,” he says, making no attempt to move closer to the front door.

“Okay,” Julian says, “are you going to knock?”

“I thought you could--- and then he’ll answer, and you could present me or something--- that’s stupid, I know, I don’t know why---,”

“We don’t have time for that,” Julian remarks, and it’s true. They don’t have time to discuss how they’re going to get Max to stay long enough to allow Leon into his house, because as if Leon’s ex-boyfriend senses their presence, the door opens… and another man patters down the front steps.

Julian’s pretty sure Leon and Max curse at exactly the same moment.

Max doesn’t slam the door instantly like Julian expects. He’s pretty sure Max hasn’t even noticed him yet, and maybe he should slip away before all hell breaks loose, but the intensity of the moment has him rooted. It isn’t even his. 

Leon seems to have lost the ability to speak.

“Max,” Julian braves, watches Max’s eyes roll to him almost in shock, sees them flicker back to Leon the moment he’s noted Julian’s presence. “Leon came to see you.”

“But if you’ve got a visitor I can go, if he’s just gone to the shops or something---,” Leon blabbers, even though it’s been the first thing he’s said to Max in ages, and really he’s been so mentally untraceable Julian has had no idea what he might come out with, but he still wasn’t expecting that.

“No,” Max says. His voice is oddly calm, a stark contrast to his face which has seemingly faded of all colour. “I suppose you should come in. What about you, Julian?” They both know Max well enough to tell that he’s fighting to keep his tone vacant, and it works when his words are aimed at Julian, but he can’t help but wonder if his friend can tell that Max's voice tremors when Leon looks back at him. Julian can’t ruin that for them.

“I’ll, um, leave you two to it,” Julian says, grabbing a fistful of Leon’s coat to pull him back. “Text me if you end up staying. And, um, good luck.”

“Thank you. I’ll even keep your secret.”

“You owe it to me,” Julian smiles.

He hasn’t moved before the door falls shut behind his friends. The temptation to stay, watch the scene unfold through the small window by Max’s front door, is strong, yet he can already see the desperation start to etch its way onto Leon’s face and it’s his cue to leave.

He’s barely even reached the park by the time his phone buzzes. There isn’t time for any dry thoughts, silent evisceration of Leon for managing to get Max in bed in under five minutes, which is for the best when he unlocks his phone and the actual contents of the message pop up on the screen.

**Leon: **help me

**Leon: **max has gone to call someone

**Leon: **jule what the fuck am i supposed to do?

**Leon: **i don’t know if he’s mad or not

**Julian: **what have you said to each other?

**Leon: **nothing but small talk

**Julian: **make it clear that you’re here to talk things out

**Julian: **don’t leave until you’ve told him how you feel

**Leon: **i want to run away

**Julian: **don’t

**Julian: **you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it if you do

**Julian: **he still feels the same way

**Julian: **you were the only person who knew how to get him to talk

**Julian: **you won’t have lost that ability

**Leon: **fuck he’s coming back

**Leon: **that guy was a one-night stand by the way

**Julian: **he’s doing that to forget about you

It’s bullshit, they both know it, Julian can feel Leon’s disapproval radiating through his lack of response, but it doesn’t faze him. His hope for them outweighs his cliché messages.

He finds himself sitting on a bench on the South Bank four hours later, the serious strains of early evening starting to splatter its colours on the water and a light breeze dotting through the trees. The journey back to the city centre seemed nowhere near as long without Leon’s constant concern clamouring silently for his attention, the sights he’s managed to see, the gentle swoop of the London Eye rising above the city, above the river flowing slowly below him.

If he thinks hard enough, he can just about conjure up the feeling of Kai’s hand ghosting across his. 

London is so oblivious to the fact Julian’s in love, and yet he feels like his secret is splashing itself into the murky surface of the Thames. It’s so loud, so interpersonal, a heaving metropolis that hasn’t aged since Julian was running through its streets with a seventeen-year-old Kai, laughing freely like he wasn’t a footballer and just some kid again.

His hands find his way to Kai’s messages by themselves. There are the texts from this morning, the texts from the time in between, Max’s address, the panic that plagued him when Kai disappeared into a Barcelona woodland. The texts from before.

Julian’s watching the water flow underneath the arches of Westminster Bridge and out of site when his phone vibrates in his lap.

**Leon: **hope you’ve got your key. i’m staying at max’s

**Leon: **thank you

**Leon: **i’ll tell you everything tomorrow

**Julian: **okay

**Julian: **have fun! ;)

**Leon: **same could be said for you

Julian doesn’t dignify him with a response, and he has no clue what he might be intruding on if he did. He says something to Kai that conveys the tiniest extents of what’s been clouding his mind the entire day, stuffing his phone in his pocket as he walks away from the Bank full of memories. Unplaceable guitar strains echo in his mind.

Wind blusters mess his hair as he stands on the hotel rooftop, watching the moon elevates itself into the nearly-black horizon. Kai told him he’s busy for another fifteen minutes, so Julian kept climbing until the ceiling fell away into sky, staring upwards until his gaze trickled down to be blinded by the glow of the city. He can’t shake the romanticism of it all. Maybe there’s a bravery there, with what the city means to the two of them, that would spur him to move a hand to clasp Kai’s upturned palm and have it _mean _something.

Loneliness can kill, he thinks, as his eyes open from where he hadn’t realised they had fallen shut. Cityscape meets endlessness, skyscrapers rising higher away from him it seems they’re painted in the sky, yet if Kai was here, breathing quietly and watching it like Julian is, he wouldn’t be watching it.

The thoughts almost throw him down the stairs as he descends back to his hotel room. They delay him, wrap their threatening taunts of bliss around his neck as he tumbles helplessly backwards onto his bed in the far too big room, hand letting go of his phone that falls to the floor with a clatter that does nothing to disrupt Julian’s antithesis of peace.

His ringtone, a dumb theme tune of some childhood show Kai pranked him with that he never bothered to get rid of, does. It doesn’t remind him of the heated promise he made to his best friend earlier in the day, but Kai’s acres of skin do.

“Hey,” Kai smiles. “I believe you owe me something.”

“Yeah,” Julian sighs. The size of the disparity should knock him senseless, leave him dumbfounded and unable to catch up with the way Kai runs a hand through his curls when all he’s done for the past eight hours is think about _being in love with him_, but then Kai’s camera slips and Julian sees a flash of nipple and his body responds of its own accord.

“Do you want to small talk?”

“No,” Julian mumbles. That damn guitar strain is still playing on loop. He wants to forget it, wants to let Kai help him forget it, wants Kai’s moans racking through his body and _nothing else._

“How do we do this?”

Julian answers by rifling his shirt over his head. His voice has married the London skyline and emigrated, tying him down to being there, silent, eyes flickering over Kai as his dick starts to get harder.

It visits just long enough for him to say,

“Did you come after I left?”

“No,” Kai says, sounding way more affected by Julian’s question than he expected. His smile is bashful, creates so much dangerous fodder for Julian’s mind to attach itself to. “I wanted to wait for you.”

Julian winks his response. It might look awful, might be something Kai will mock him for once they’ve tended to this slow-burn of a fire growing between them, but right then it isn’t like that. It’s so different when they do this, Julian’s always thought this, gentle shows of affection that Julian knows is characteristic of his best friend when he’s vulnerable.

He hates whoever will get to see this expression on Kai’s face. Whoever has gotten to see it.

He wishes there was a way he could claim it for himself, without sounding like the biggest cunt to ever break Kai’s heart.

“I’ve been thinking about it all day, though,” Kai groans out, and _fuck_, _that’s _the direction he wants to take this and Julian is very, very much onboard with that particular idea, the sudden grow of pace feeling like take off and the London Eye merged into one, soft, fast, dangerous, hurtling headlong off a cliff with no clue how long the drop beneath it is.

“Anything specific?” Julian’s tone drawls without intention, but it still manages to register itself over the frenetic expression painted on Kai’s face as his best friend nods. “How about you tell me exactly what you’ve been thinking about?”

Kai looks so desirous there’s a moment when Julian’s sure he’s going to come before Julian can even slip his jeans off, but then Kai forces words out past whatever inhibition and arousal combination that’s moulded itself into his throat. The younger one is mumbling something about fondling his hand over Julian’s waistband in the way that swims directly to Julian’s cock, which is utterly devilish when covets of Kai’s intoned touch occupy the forefront of Julian’s mind. Absences astute, Kai beautiful, Julian completely fucked.

“---my hand would trail further underneath your shirt, maybe ghost across your nipple---,” Kai’s saying, and Julian can’t stop himself from blindly following the intoxicated rambling. It elicits a groan that has him throwing caution to the wind and palming over his dick prematurely, shivering at the wet patch starting to form. “God, carry on doing that.”

“Doing what?” Julian replies dumbly, humiliation burning through where the thrum had reddened his cheeks.

“Whatever you’re doing to yourself. I can see---,” Kai cuts off, breathes, looks like he’s about to die, continues speaking, “your arm moving.”

“Only if you keep speaking.” For all their experience, Julian’s never been like this. He’s never struggled to enunciate, never felt the throbbing agony of words choked out against a painfully dry throat. Maybe it’s the feeling of being picked raw, maybe Kai’s been eating away at him and it’s only the distance that has skinned him to the bone.

“I’d take your shirt off after that,” Kai blurts out, disorientating Julian again before he remembers that Kai was fantasising about explorative touching that they’ve so rarely divulged in. He hopes Kai doesn’t confess the secrets of his fucking universe in the brief seconds Julian’s taking his shirt off, can’t read the way Kai is looking at him through the camera. There’s too much feedback to pick up if his breath hitches.

Silence that follows the feedback deters him into panic, eyes too glazed to focus until he realises that he can see the end of Kai’s dick on the bottom of the screen, watches the way his best friend trails a hand over the head and sighs to himself.

Traces of embarrassment strengthen between them when they meet each other’s eyes.

“You--- didn’t see that?” Kai asks.

“I did,” Julian says, “it’s okay. You’ve waited a lot.”

“Fuck, I have. I wish you were here, between my legs, or fucking me,” Kai’s babbles become less decipherable as he falls back against the sheets of his childhood bed, but he’s still stroking his dick while looking like a complete mess and there isn’t much Julian can do but die internally.

“Fuck whatever I was supposed to be doing here,” he gasps out, voice rising higher unintentionally as his dick springs free, “I should be in Aachen, fucking you until your whole family knows what’s happening.”

“Maybe I’d let myself moan,” Kai says and _fuck_, Julian didn’t realise Kai had been on a similar wavelength the whole time they’d been messing around. It undercuts anything he’d ever associated with Kai and sex and suddenly he’d kill to hear Kai moaning without fear of someone hearing, without muting of a video call microphone, savouring the sounds and timing his strokes with the pinnacles of Kai’s beauty.

“I can’t---,” Julian croaks, “speak anymore.”

Kai can’t even form a response. It’s only when Julian meets those eyes, even with pixelated distortion, grounds him as his dick evolves into an organ of its own entity, that he knows it’s okay to watch, see how Kai really likes to get himself off when he’s alone. It slows the pace down, melts it to pure, lazy strokes trying to comprehend the secrets of the other, introspection and sharing and it would be painstaking if it wasn’t for the fact Kai is eliciting the tiniest whines that prickle Julian in a million different ways.

It’s the fizz that brings it up to the crescendo of want that wraps the two of them together, laziness giving way to undeniable urges to admire the other, reciprocating and being scarily alone, and Julian hates the fact that this could be all him. Kai has this way of making him wonder anything yet gives nothing of the real truth away.

“K-Kai,” he says, because he’s maybe brave enough to _tell _him something, it feels right when there’s this electricity running tenfold between them. It washes him away, sparks over his skin and leaves him collapsed, that he doesn’t realise Kai’s eyes have shut and there’s snitching shudders to his breathing.

Distance is tangible when Julian watches Kai’s face contort and watches him slowly let go of his cock, trying to catch his breath and missing the waves by fractions. He looks like a delicious mess, not the collected best friend Julian’s so used to seeing, even _during _the plummeting endorphin rush, senses heightened and he’s so fucking open about it, Julian can’t comprehend the words to describe him. He mutters something like the sentiment as he loses sense of space and time for the briefest period of unfiltered bliss, but Kai isn’t even looking at him when he regains sentience.

The thought’s taunt snarls viciously.

“Wow,” Kai says, and that’s it, the eyes are back on Julian and he’s back in Kai’s world, not third-fiddle to whoever Kai was thinking about when he was touching himself, whoever Julian was a backstabbing substitute for. “We should do that again.”

“Yeah,” Julian says.

“I’ve got to go,” Kai says suddenly, yelling something poisonous at Jan (who Julian still pictures as that fucking thirteen-year-old). “But call me as soon as you get back to Dortmund. You need to explain everything that went on with that Bayern idiot and the love of his life.”

“Will do. See you soon.”

The response of a noiseless black screen might speak louder than Julian wants to think about.

* * *

_ **dortmund, germany** _

Julian settles into life surrounded by the hills in Brackel pretty quickly. He doesn’t want to forget about Leverkusen, his teammates, Kai, but within a week his former club feels like a memory fading from distant to repressed. Kai called him before he had even unlocked his front door after his first practice session, looking way too delighted when he spots the vivacious yellow training clothes Julian’s bedecked in. They hadn’t hung up until three hours later, when they were both spent from giving in to hungry desires that curve from the pits of their stomachs, Kai signing off by blowing a kiss that pinches at the nerves around Julian’s heart.

The following day, the call lasted half the time. Then it was later, until it diminished gradually into no call at all. 

He’d eventually accepted Jadon, Jacob and Thorgan’s invitation to join them in tasting the Dortmund nightlife, watching the latter two get engulfed by the dancefloor as he sat by the bar with Jadon, getting increasingly drunker and laughing at their growing inability to understand each other. By the end of the night, they’d gotten recognised, sprinted away from the club and ended up almost knocking Jacob’s doorway out in their haste to evade the fan-chase that ensued, half-carrying a bleeding Thorgan who’d thought it was a good idea to jump off a higher-than-expected pavement.

Kai’s name had swum into his view as he’d checked the time at way later than what’s permitted in their regulatory lifestyle, notification buzzing with four missed calls timed for two hours ago. Julian’s too drunk to think about the depths the night has plunged into when he calls him back.

The noticeable tired drone in Kai’s voice sends his mind into overdrive. He’s heard the gruffness of Kai’s morning voice more times than he can count, touched himself over Kai’s choked groans as he woke up an embarrassing amount, but there’s something about the late-night exhaustion that prickles at his skin.

“Why did you call me?” He says, nodding goodbye at his teammates as he leaves Jacob’s house.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kai grumbles. “Are you drunk?”

“Yeah,” Julian answers, already fearing the lecture he’s going to get from the younger one. “I went out with Jadon, Jacob and Thorgan. Thorgan fell off the pavement and cut himself. It was really funny. You should come with us sometime, you’d get on really well with Jadon, hey, the two of you could talk English!”

“No, thanks.”

“Oh,” Julian says, before realising the hostility in Kai’s voice has made him stop dead in his tracks on the street side. “Sorry.”

“Did you call me for a particular reason, or just because you’re drunk?” Kai asks, still sounding beyond annoyed and Julian wants another one of those toxic shots to try and erase it from where it’s already ingraining itself into his memory. 

“I wanted to know why you called me,”

“I called you because I was horny and wanted to see if you were around to get me off,” Kai says it like it’s meaningless, like it won’t pique Julian’s curiosity despite his current setting. “I don’t want to, and it’s bad for me, but I keep coming back to you. There you go. Shoot me.”

Julian wants to ask what the fuck Kai means by that, what’s so wrong between them that Kai thinks ringing to touch himself isn’t allowed or something? Julian’s only an hour away, Kai could drive that easily if he wanted to fuck him. But instead he finds himself biting his lip to conceal his moan, muttered words about how much he needs Kai, and blushing when he makes eye contact with a disgusted man passing him on the street. “Right here, now.”

“Aren’t you in public? I can hear the wind.” Kai sounds a lot more awake, but Julian’s capability for coherency is not extensive in his state. He spends the entire harried walk home fantasising about fucking Kai again, but he must take a wrong turn somewhere because by the time he finally drops his keys on his doorstep, Kai has fallen asleep on the line.

Sleep eats out his want. He passes out almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

Julian knows he’s fucked the moment he wakes the next morning, with only three hours to go until practice, hair that won’t just fix itself with a quick brush, and a throbbing headache. There’s messages left from Jacob, Jadon and Thorgan on a group chat Julian doesn’t recall being created, all of them seemingly in as shitty a condition as him, a gruesome picture from Thorgan of the scars on his foot.

Pasta does its best to sober him, but his head is still behind when he parks his bike in the racks at Brackel as the sun rises to the highest point in the sky. Jadon’s just entering as he reaches the door, looking about as prepared as Julian feels, despite the fact they have the Super Cup against Bayern in slightly over a week.

“Marco’s going to kill us both,” Jadon says, in rapid English that Julian almost fails to understand. It doesn’t help that it reminds him of the shit he chatted to Kai the previous night, prompts an irrational annoyance with his teammate that dissipates the moment Jadon pushes the door to the dressing room open and they’re met with half the senior members of the team glaring them down. Out of the corner of his eye, Julian spots Thorgan, foot strapped, and Jacob, blushing sheepishly in their places on the bench.

“Ah, yes, the other convicted criminals,” Marco says, in his English for Jadon’s benefit, and if it wasn’t for the fact Jadon looks like he’s trying not to laugh, Julian would be pretty scared of the stone expression on the captain’s face. “I don’t know if I’m more upset that you went out, or that I’m not young enough to join you and still be okay to train the following day.”

“Not all of us are like you, grandpa,” Jadon shoots back, dodging the pinch Marco aims for his ear with his already comfortingly-familiar accented laugh. They’re fined, and Thorgan is publicly berated for his carelessness in front of the entire team, but they head out to training diligently and nothing else is said.

Sweat is pouring down his face after only two hours of training, Favre highlighting the importance of a win against Bayern boosting morale and fan belief in their season. He does overhear one of the assistant coaches explain to Marco that they’re having the following day to rest, followed by a full week of varyingly intense preparation, which is pointless given Julian’s adductor twinges violently after the very next drill and he’s in the hospital for a scan before he’s even out of his training clothes.

The doctor greets him with something like, “Hi Julian. I hope I don’t have to see you a lot,” that Julian can’t find it in him to reciprocate the friendly tone, so he strains a smile and follows the instructions silently, profusely thanking the doctor at the end of the appointment even despite the negative news.

What with the uncertainty surrounding him and Kai, he doesn’t know if it’s a good idea to text him with the news, but he does anyway, because that’s what Kai did back when they were together in Leverkusen. A particularly painful memory of a jogging Kai getting thrown on the floor by Kimmich resurfaces, making Julian publicly wince, remembers how he sprinted directly off the pitch, snubbing Joshua’s intended handshake in favour of finding out how Kai was.

**Julian**: i got injured

His preoccupation presses ‘send’ on the message.

Kai must not be training, because the response comes easily.

**Kai: **Is it bad?

**Julian: **i’m going to miss the super cup

**Kai: **Oh. Sorry.

**Julian: **it’s okay, i’ll be okay

**Julian: **could i drive over and see you tomorrow?

**Kai: **Sorry, I’m busy right now.

**Kai: **I have a guest over. They’re staying for another four days.

**Julian: **oh, okay. have fun!

Kai doesn’t end their conversation with a nonsensical emoji, and that’s what triggers worry. Nosiness plagues him, intrigue into who his guest is, why Julian isn’t allowed to go and visit him.

(He doesn’t even want to think about the most plausible answer.)

Leon, however, picks up on the first ring.

“You’re injured,” the Bayern player says instead of ‘hello,’ (seriously, maybe he’s got a phobia of the word), “I saw it on the Dortmund Twitter account.”

“You’re sure that’s a good idea, following the closest rival of your former club and the biggest title challengers against your club this season? Or, do you just like to stalk me?”

“Busted,” Leon laughs, “anyway, is it serious? Do I need to send Kai to come and kiss it better?”

“Good fucking luck,” Julian exclaims, sounding way more bitter about the topic than he expected. “He’s got a _guest_, who’s apparently staying for four days.”

“Four days?! Damn, that’s a lot of sex.”

“Yeah, thanks, Leon. Not like that’s everything I’ve been worrying about for the past---,”

“—what, five minutes? Bro, you were not a couple, you’re still not a couple, mainly because your dumb ass didn’t confess to him even though literally everyone was demanding you to do it.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“Not anymore!” Leon’s sudden chirpy tone has unconcealed mocking in it, and it makes Julian want to reach through his phone screen to punch him. “I actually got my shit together, if you don’t remember, went to London to reconnect with the love of my life and now I get to have sex with him _and _kiss him whenever I want!”

“Except for a solid ninety percent of the time when you’re in Munich and he’s in London.”

“That’s minor details. Anyway, the moral of the story is that honesty gets you emotional, romantic sex, and dishonesty gets you wanking in a hotel room having to bite your lip to keep from spilling your secrets.”

“God, I do not want to picture you and Max that night. I bet you fucking cried.” Julian says, because the alternative is snapping at his friend with the truth that Kai wouldn’t respond with the elation of Max if he dared confess his secrets. He’d take the lonely masturbating in order to have Kai feel some semblance of _friendship _towards him.

“I did!” Leon says, completely unabashed. “So did he. It was very sweet.”

“Very vomit-inducing, more like,” Julian mutters.

“Oh, Jule, always so grumpy,” Leon fawns, and he’s _very _close to being hung up on. “What’s got you so sad? Is it thinking about how Kai is an hour away, lying in bed with a very beautiful human, naked, sweaty, kissing them and not next to you?”

“Fuck off,” Julian growls, “what the fuck are you getting from this, you dickhead?”

“Nothing, although I do love to tease you. I just want to spur you into action.”

“Spur me to do _what_? Kai doesn’t like me, every single person on the planet knows that, and like you said, he’s probably got someone over who he _does _like. Telling him just rips a gash in whatever it was we had over the three years we’ve been close.”

“You can’t seriously think the amount of sex you had was normal for friends-with-benefits?”

“What? Yeah, I did?”

“Bro, there were times when you’d fuck every night for an entire week, and then sleep together. You didn’t go back to your flat at all, except to change clothes, and then you’d end up having more sex in the planned five minutes you were supposed to be up there! You can’t tell me the two of you had _never _felt something for each other, not people who have sex more than me, I mean, if you have more sex than this gorgeous man, you’re pretty whipped.”

“Having more sex than you isn’t an achievement. You were a virgin at twenty-one.”

“Where the fuck are you getting that from?” Leon sounds genuinely offended and it’s the most in-character he’s ever been, upset by this yet unflinching at Julian’s insults. “I had sex at fifteen, you dick!”

“How much did you pay for that?”

“Here I am, trying to be nice to you because I know you’re still broken-hearted in spite of that front you put up, and you really have the nerve to treat me like this. I don’t know why I bother,” Leon sighs dramatically, but Julian can hear the smile in his voice. He’s about to apologise even though he knows Leon will brush it off with an egotistical comment when Leon continues, “I’ve got to go though, bro. Max says he wants to call me in about ten minutes, and I have to go and prepare, if you know what I mean.”

“Fuck you, I didn’t need to know that,” Julian laughs, “see you next week when we thrash you at the best stadium in the world.”

“I won’t tell Kai you said that.” The line goes dead with a click.

Emotions swell and start to cloud his vision like they always do when he hears Kai’s name. There’s guilt, shot straight from the betrayal laced heavily in his best friend’s eyes the night they fought in Julian’s hallway, there’s pain from hearing the ignorance aimed at him in favour of someone else, there’s that stab of love that he can’t decide if he wants to act on it or kill it in a pit of fire. Or maybe himself. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with hurting Kai like he did.

He’d just leave Kai with the pain. He couldn’t do that, no matter how great the burden of his mistake weights on his shoulders.

He somehow ends up wincing as Sam enhances his characteristic of screaming down the microphone during Fortnite to a level Julian wishes he never has to bear the brunt of witnessing again, joking with Mitch about how Dortmund is completely going to demolish Leverkusen in their first meeting with Julian playing for the opposition. It feels wrong to be playing without the final member of their quartet, but Mitch awkwardly recounts how Kai arrived late to training, hair messed up and a glow under his eyes Mitch “hasn’t seen since Julian left.”

Julian clings to the reluctance like it’s some sort of lifeline. It’s the tiniest enabler to help him believe that this _isn’t what it sounds like_.

They’ve just won a game with ease (all to the soundtrack of Sam’s enthused yelling) when Julian’s phone vibrates. There’s the tiniest flicker of hope that it might be Kai, but his captain’s name pops up on the screen instead.

**Marco: **Hey, Jule.

**Marco: **How are you feeling?

“Lads, please hold off the next game for a moment. I just need to talk to Marco.”

Mitch mumbles assent, and Julian’s deafened by Sam yelling hello at his new captain like he’s going to be able to hear him, and there’s the trademark berating of the oldest one to his boyfriend.

**Julian: **I’m out for the Super Cup

**Marco: **Yes, I’ve seen.

**Marco: **I meant more with the whole Havertz thing.

**Marco: **How about you come to Mario and my place tomorrow evening?

**Julian: **there isn’t much to tell, but it’s kind of you.

**Julian: **what time?

**Marco: **turn up about half seven

**Marco: **there’s no rush

**Julian: **okay, see you then

“Done?” Mitch asks when Julian puts his headset back over his head. They play another few games before Sam remembers he’s got morning training and Julian hangs up purely to avoid listening to their sickly-sweet tellings-off now Sam isn’t in Leverkusen either. It’s not that late, but there isn’t anything else to do other than ponder the extent to which Kai might be moaning in his lover’s ear, what that sounds like giving Julian never got to hear it in person, and the thoughts drown him.

Slow, sad songs rumbling in the background do just enough to expel the doubts from his mind as he climbs underneath his bedsheets, avoiding thoughts like he’s trying to shove the dark out of his way, impossible but he won’t stop trying. That is, until the music suddenly cuts off and his phone explodes noisily with an incoming call. 

Fatigue glues his eyes together, so he isn’t expecting to hear Kai’s voice when he answers.

“Hey,” Kai says, sounding almost soft. It makes Julian’s heart thump wildly, crazily, not with the control he normally forces upon himself. He collapses into a metaphorical mess the second Kai’s gentle voice floats through the receiver, sounding like himself, calm, happy, for the first time in _ages_. “Were you sleeping?”

“I wasn’t asleep yet,” Julian says, his voice an oxymoron to Kai. Just like they’ve always been, with Julian’s tendency to be a fuck up and Kai’s kind, honest, irresistible personality that is impossible not to adore. 

“I can’t talk for long,” Kai pauses, and Julian wonders if his best friend is listening to whoever’s at his house, “but I wanted to wish you get well soon.”

“Thanks, I wish I could come and see you, but I understand if you’re busy with your guest.” He stops, waits for Kai to say something, but there’s silence, save for the tiniest catch of Kai’s breath. It’s unusual. “Who is it, by the way?”

“Oh, um, yeah---, no one you’d know.”

“Should I not ask?”

“Yes?” Kai says, sounding like he’s completely fucked in love and it takes Julian a second to remember that tone isn’t for him anymore, if it ever was. “Sorry, Jule, my guest is impatient. I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you soon. I promise.”

“Wait!” He calls, thinking of another plan on the spot. “Can I call you tomorrow? It’s been a while since I’ve got some relief, you know, and it’d be nice to have you help me.”

“You’re always adorable when you ask for that,” Kai says, before blabbering something about being busy that seems way too painful for a cockblock. There isn’t time for anything else, because Kai’s gone, he’s gone to go and fuck the lover that isn’t Julian.

Exhaustion wins out over his pain at about four in the morning and relinquishes the battle by six. 

He spends the day staring out of the window, not eating, not drinking, just nonchalance and faking being okay. He wishes Kai could see him now, looking completely unbothered about his best friend’s conquest, maybe Kai would believe that Julian’s even _happy _for him, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. He knows it’s unfair of him, if Kai’s found someone else that won’t leave him like Julian did, then that should be the best thing for the thing Julian prioritised over anything - Kai’s happiness - but there’s too many complications for him to be logical.

Hate spawns for the mystery person with every step he takes on the Dortmund street that evening. He passes a river, pledges to follow it to see where it leads to, maybe it flows the entire hour back to Leverkusen, maybe Kai’s in that clearing where they, Mitch and Sam frolicked that summer evening a year ago, thinking about him.

Kai’s not. Kai’s in his flat, fucking someone else. 

Julian sprints away from the water, looking like an idiot, just to rid himself of the thought.

He gets lost on the way to Marco’s house, humiliation eating his insides as he trips over the threshold (his mind flashes back to falling on the stairs outside Kai’s hotel room), yet his captain just laughs it off, leading him into the kitchen where Mario’s cooked low-fat snacks for them to take into the living room.

“Make yourself at home,” Marco says, chucking his feet up on a pouffe and pulling Mario into his chest. It makes Julian’s heart twinge. They’re looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to begin his story, and the realisation douses him like the discomfiture of being made to sing in front of the entire squad as an initiation. He hasn’t learnt anything since Marco spoke to him in that jungle of a hotel garden, if anything, his world has spun even further of axis and his inconceivable level of attraction to Kai is wholly responsible.

“I--- still don’t know how to talk about this.”

“I get it,” Mario says with a smile, and it’s already clear that he’s going to be a godsend when it comes to conducting himself with his own betrayal. Still, the happiness engraved on his face foretells a future Julian would give anything to obtain. “Everyone at Bayern got so tired with my inability to divulge my feelings around the transfer. The first thing I learnt was that I needed time.”

“We apologise if we overstep,” Marco adds hastily, “if this is too much of a rush, we can ditch the topic, but from what we spoke about during the international break, we thought it’d be useful if we could impart some more of our experience-gained wisdom. From both sides, which is why I’ve brought this traitor of a boyfriend along with me.”

“One, I live here. Two, I literally came back. Three, I sucked you off to get you to forgive me.”

“Bold of you to assume I actually forgave you and didn’t just act for the past three years.”

“You’re the worst actor I have ever met. You ate the last brownie once and managed to lie to me about it for not even two minutes.”

“Shut up,” Marco uses the arm that’s over Mario’s shoulder to mock-choke him, “we have a guest, who’s here to have our help. Stop embarrassing me and help, or I’ll write to Bayern and ask them to take you back.”

“You’d only do that if you had a death wish. The fangirls would simultaneously die.”

“I’m sorry about my immature boyfriend. Although, I know you must understand his plight with the fangirls. You and Kai were likened to the younger us,”

“I know,” Julian answers. “It made leaving even worse.”

“Okay, let’s start,” Mario cuts in, “I need some context. Give me a backing of what you’re dealing with.”

“What went down between me and Kai?”

“Yeah. Start from the moment you realised you had feelings for your teammate.”

“Well, I thought he was really attractive when I saw him in the youth team and when he first broke into the seniors, but I guess the first real moment of shit between us was the day I returned from the World Cup. He was so kind to me, listened to all my problems and then took so much care of me when we ended up having sex. It just spiralled from there, really. A lot of sex, a lot of longing from my side, a night of kissing in Munich.”

“But you never told him anything?”

“He didn’t want to talk. I kept thinking that we should talk about what was between us,” if it’s bending the truth, Mario and Marco don’t need to know. “But eventually I gave up and just let him do his thing. It got too much, so when Dortmund came knocking, I left without ever clarifying my motive or his emotions.”

“This is where you were up to when I spoke to you just over a month ago. Did you talk it out with him like I wanted you to?” Marco says, and suddenly Julian remembers the terror of being trapped in his green-grey stare the morning after Kai’s birthday, when his best friend leapt onto his back in the dining hall. “The two of you looked like nothing had changed.”

“I tried to,” Julian says, desperation squeezing into his tone, “believe me. I wanted to talk about it, but we just ended up having sex and then he said some bullshit about understanding me and kicked me out. I was confused as anyone when he bounded downstairs and acted like that with me.”

Julian had never analysed it in depth, too relieved that Kai had seemingly set apart their issue and wanted him back. He’d had sex, and video calls, plaguing his thoughts back then, not spending his time trying to paper over the cracks in Kai’s demeanour that are so glaringly obvious in hindsight.

Failure heightens when Mario’s smile drops and there’s the tiniest, “shit,” rings out over the room. It swarms towards Julian, clasps itself around his throat, speaks in his place.

“What do you mean by that?”

“What happened after international break?” Marco interjects. Julian wonders if he senses the heavy atmosphere, or if it’s an attempt to shatter it, collapse it into pieces on the floor like Julian craves, because Mario is looking at him like he’s _fucked up badly_ and that’s perhaps the worst possible scenario of all.

“We went away to Ibiza together.”

“Did you have sex?”

“A couple of times. Then he left to go away with his family, and I went to London with Leon Goretzka. We’ve had Skype sex a couple of times since then. I got injured, so I suggested going to visit him,” Julian knows he’s got some maturity listening, because there’s no giggling, no underhand comments about sex, just concerned eyes and bitten lips. “But he’s got someone else visiting.”

“I obviously am not in telepathic communication with Havertz,” Mario tries to joke, but his tone’s all wrong. “But I think both of you have given each other too many mixed signals. When I left to go to Bayern, I turned up here and told Marco, and then ran away again. It was idiotic, and in a way, we’re still untangling the cobwebs created from my instincts.”

“I didn’t even tell Kai,” Julian admits quietly. “He found out---,”

“--- on social media,” Marco finishes. “I overheard him telling Leon and Serge in the common room.”

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Mario admits, “and honestly, I don’t think I should go over it now. I will help you, I just think Marco and I need to discuss this first.”

“I messed up,” Julian says, desperate now, “I just need to fix it.”

“Wait,” Marco says, “don’t do anything impulsive. Don’t do anything when he isn’t with you. No text conversations, don’t fuck him over video call, as tempting as it might be. Let him get used to being without you, but please, let yourself get used to being without him too.”

“How do I do that, without having a huge fight with him?”

“Throw yourself into football. He will too, if he isn’t already. We’re always here to talk to you if you need it, but I hope you understand that we’re reluctant to give you advice that might conflict what you’ve already heard. We’ve got your back, Jule. And remember, you haven’t done anything wrong. If your former teammates want to hate you, if the fans want to hate you, if _Kai _wants to hate you, let them. This is your life.”

If sleep-deprivation wasn’t running through his vessels faster than his blood, he’d maybe stop them, ask for more preemptive advice, but instead he just lets them lead him outside.

The night air is clear. There’s a train clattering along the tracks on a flyover. There’s a slight breeze, flitting his hair back. He’s smiling back at Mario and Marco on their doorstep when his phone vibrates with a message.

It’s from Kai. His fingers tremble as he unlocks his phone.

**Kai: **I’ve found someone else.

He blinks once, twice, three times, and it’s still there. A tear slips down his cheek faster than he can move to wipe it. Maybe if this was a television show, it’d be the moment the viewers can watch his heart break. More than break. It feels like he's been kicked in the gut, and then stamped on for good measure. It might be the worst he’s ever felt. His body doesn’t work, it isn’t responding to his attempt to move, he’s stationary on a Dortmund pavement, staring at the screen as the three little dots appear in the corner, disappearing, reappearing, before a message bubble pops up.

**Kai: **I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.


End file.
